City Council - Regular Meeting

That's one I couldn't figure out too.

Good evening and welcome to the September 1st, 2026 governing body meeting of the city of Topeka. Welcome everyone this evening. I will now call this meeting to order. We open up the city with council member Valdivia Alcala who has this evening's invocation. Please rise if you are able.

Thank you, Mayor. The next two Tuesdays we'll be having somebody from the public come in, but I'm going to be reading a piece from a Lebanese-American poet, philosopher, mystic that died in the 1930s. His name was Khalil Gibran, widely known for his iconic book, The Prophet. Reason and Passion. And the priestess spoke again and said, Speak to us of reason and passion. And he answered saying, your soul is oftentimes a battlefield upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against passion and your appetite. Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, that I might turn the discord and the rivalry of your elements into oneness and melody. But how shall I, unless you yourselves be also the peacemakers, nay, the lovers of all your elements? Your reason and your passion are the rudder and the sails of your seafaring soul. If either your sails or your rudder be broken, you can but toss and drift, or else be held at a standstill mid-seas. For reason alone is a force confining, and passion unattended is a flame that burns to its own destruction. Therefore, let your soul exalt your reason to the highest of passion that it may sing, and let it direct your passion with reason that your passion may live through its own daily resurrection, and like the phoenix rise above its own ashes. I would have you consider your judgment and your appetite even as you would two loved guests in your house. Surely you would not honor one guest above the other, for he who is more mindful of one loses the love and faith of both. Among the hills, when you sit in the cool shade of the white poplars sharing the peace and serenity of distant fields and meadows, then let your heart say in silence, God rests in reason. And when the storm comes and the mighty wind shakes the forest and thunder and lightning proclaim the majesty of the sky, then let your heart say in awe, God moves in passion. And since you are a breath in God's sphere and a leaf in God's forest, You too should rest in reason and move in passion.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands,

Clerk would take roll, please.

Mayor Duncan.

Here.

Council members Hiller. Here. Valdivia Alcala. Here. Ortiz. Here. Banks. Here. Kell.

Here.

Miller.

Here.

Bradbury. Here. McGee.

Here.

And Hofer. Here. Okay. We have 10 present.

All right. We will move on to the consent agenda. City Clerk.

Okay. 2A is the approval of a human resources contract between the City of Topeka and Kansas Personnel Services doing business as key staffing for temporary employment services to include clerical, general, skilled labor, and professional positions. 2B is an approval of the Public Works Design-Build contract between the City of Topeka and KBS Constructors Inc. and an amount to be determined by mutual agreement between the City and Design-Build team during both the preliminary estimate development and guaranteed maximum price development for design-build services. 2C is an approval of a professional services contract exceeding $50,000 between the City of Topeka and Kurtz & Buck LLC for continued representation of the City in a civil lawsuit matter. 2D is an ordinance introduced by City Manager Robert M. Perez allowing and approving City expenditures for the period of June 27, 2026 to July 31, 2026 and enumerating said expenditures therein. 2E is a resolution introduced by Public Infrastructure Committee recommending approval of project number 70105001 for the construction of a sidewalk on Lyman Road. 2F is a resolution introduced by the Public Infrastructure Committee recommending approval of project numbers 29114203 and 29116001 for the construction of a new Alkyre pump station. G are the minutes of the regular meeting of August 18th, 2026, and these special meetings of August 19th, 2026 and August 25th, 2026. And there are no applications.

Council Member Ortiz.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'd like to pull consent to be for discussion, please.

All right. We are going to move consent item requested by council member 2B. It is now going to become action item E. And you're going to say, but Mayor, we already have an action item E. And in a minute, I'm going to tell you why that's not accurate either. So it is now going to be action item E. With that, we have a motion to approve as amended, I'm hoping, from Councilmember Kell, and a second from Councilmember Valdivia. Clerk would take the vote, please.

And Councilmember Hofer?

Yes. OK.

Okay, we have nine yes with one abstaining. Council Member Bradbury.

ALL RIGHT. WITH THAT, WE'RE GOING TO MOVE ON TO ACTION ITEMS. BUT BEFORE WE BEGIN, UNLESS THERE'S AN OBJECTION, I'M HOPING THERE'S NOT. THE REASON I SAID WE DON'T HAVE AN ACTION ITEM E ANYMORE, BUT NOW WE HAVE ONE IS, I'D LIKE TO MOVE THE UTILITY RATES TO DISCUSSION ITEM A AND THEN HAVE EVERYTHING ELSE FLOAT DOWN. AS YOU SEE, YOU GOT SOME UPDATED INFORMATION. SO INSTEAD OF ASKING US TO TAKE ANY ACTION THIS EVENING, STAFF WOULD LIKE THE OPPORTUNITY TO GO THROUGH THE UPDATED INFORMATION. AND THEN WE CAN CONSIDER OVER THE NEXT WEEK OR TWO IS TO TAKE SOME ACTION. SO THERE'S NO OBJECTION. It will now become a discussion item for this evening. We good? Perfect. Hope that makes sense to everybody. So with that, we will move on to action items. City Clerk.

A is the approval of the 2027 social service grants allocation in the amount of $491,904. City Manager.

Thank you. Mayor, members of the governing body, this item, which I recommend for approval, is asking for your consideration of the 2027 social service grants in the amount of approximately 492,000 as recommended by the United Ways Grant Review Committee, recommended by the Social Service Grants Committee on July 24, 2026, and discussed by the governing body on August 18, 2026. With that, I'll turn this over to Kerry Higgins, Director of Housing and Homeless Services, to lead us through this item.

All right, good evening. So we were before you last week going over the social service grant recommendations and you should have a spreadsheet in front of you with those different breakdowns. So tonight we are here with Jessica, the CEO of United Way to answer any additional questions that you might have.

All right. Any questions or comments from the governing body? I know we discussed this at a previous meeting. Just to remind the public, this is a major mention, so this isn't the first we've heard of it. All right. If not, then I have a motion to approve from Councilmember Ortiz and a second from Councilmember McGee. Any other final questions or comments before we take a vote? All right. City Clerk, take the vote.

Okay. And Councilmember Hofer?

Yes.

All right, we have 10 yes. The motion carries. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. See, nice and easy. Appreciate you coming, though, because you never know. With that, we will move on to action item B, city clerk.

B is a resolution introduced by the Transient Guest Tax Committee allocating transient guest tax funds to the Sunflower Sports Association to finance a field four artificial turf and ADA accessible concrete pathway.

City Manager.

Thank you. Mayor and members of the governing body, as approved by the Transition Guest Tax Committee on August 14, 2026, this item would allocate $913,500 of TGT funds to provide a field for artificial turf and ADA accessible concrete pathway as planned and developed by Sunflower Sports Association. Funds in the approximate amount of $488,000 will be distributed this year. And the remaining dollars will be distributed quarterly up to the total funding cap of $913,500. I do recommend approval of this item. And with that, I will turn this over to Josh McInerney, Deputy Director of Budget and Finance. to lead us through this item.

Josh. City Manager explained it well. The one thing I would add is this one, we have currently a 7% transient guest tax rate. This is 1% that's just dedicated to Sunflower Soccer and that runs through 2032. So now that the special assessments are paid off, there's going to be about $400,000 a year they have to use on various projects. This would be one of them that they'll come back to the committee and eventually this body to make those draw requests.

Council Member Ortiz.

Josh, that's what I was going to ask. This expires in 2032, correct?

Correct.

Okay. On the ADH, well, let's see. Let me go back here. On the ADA accessible concrete pathway, do you know is that around the whole facility or what?

I have Dustin in the audience, and he'd probably love to explain that.

Well, come on, Dustin. Because I know that that was in a plan. And I know a lot of the parents were anxious to get that. So while their kids are practicing...

So that was kind of the original plan, I think, when the complex was put into place. This focuses on more that northeast corner to where we have 88 pathway in between the two fields, but also on that north parking lot all the way down to about halfway through field five. And then we start that connection and corridor. The problem with doing all this now is in phase three, there may be adjustments or anything changes to that based on elevations. or how we see the project going that we have to make adjustments. So we don't want to install something and have to tear it out to replace it.

We did get the lights up, correct?

The lights are up and they're active, yes.

Okay. And then is there any turf out there now?

There is that one turf field, which is on Field 3. So Field 4 will butt right up to it. And then there'll be about a 25-foot concrete pathway in between that'll make that connection. And then there'll be access from the parking lot to those fields on concrete pathways.

What are we doing with the south part of it?

So the south part is kind of the final project next gen. So we're focusing on this northeast corridor for phase two, which just will kind of be the staple. So when we're done with that, we'll have the fencing, the landscaping. So when we go down the road, people will be able to see this is what the complex is going to look like. And then we're basically going to go around the complex like a horseshoe. So we'll continue down to where 5 and 6 is on the highway side, and then we'll drop back to those grass fields, put those in, and then work ourself around to the west side of the complex. And the west side of your complex will be more of your hybrid, which is like your artificial turf and grass mixture. You have some fields in the United States that have them, but they're not very popular in America, super popular overseas. So it just creates a unique complex where we have grass, artificial turf, and hybrid turf.

Okay, so we can start hosting tournaments, right?

That is the long-term goal.

Instead of going all the way to Kansas City?

100%.

Okay.

I go that way too much.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

Thank you. Absolutely. Any other questions or comments?

Mayor, can I make a comment?

Yes, Deputy Mayor.

Okay, originally they were not going to put in the extension of the sidewalks, and I requested while they were doing the construction to start putting in that pathway that goes around the outside so we could get that part moving, which we requested a long time ago. Also, the lights that were put in that are on the east side of field number five or four. They also reflect on this new field. So we're getting double duty over those flights. But this is really going to open up and help them a lot. They'll get night games. They will attract more people. And this is something we've been hoping they'd do for a while. Justin, did I miss anything?

No, I think you said everything.

OK. And the committee did vote 3-0 to move this forward. We think it's a positive direction for them. So I hope that you will support it, and I will be voting for this.

Thank you. Council Member Kell.

Thought I just had, and I can't remember on these plans, is there any future plan to expand the parking at all? Because I know going to these youth complexes, parking ends up being horrendous. The more and more you expand, but if you're not taking care of that parking aspect, it becomes a nightmare. So I wasn't sure if that was part of the plan in the future.

Yeah, so the overall scope of Project NextGen is the expansion of a west entrance, which will wrap around in the back of the complex, and there'll be another parking lot put in on the west side along with on the east side up front.

Okay, thank you.

Council Member Hiller.

Thank you, Mayor. Just to kind of catch me or maybe all of us up, this special sales tax goes until or contingent guest tax, I'm sorry, goes till 2031, through 2031, is that right?

Yeah, through the end of 2031.

And so based on the original plan for how you were going to do this, is that still pretty much the same or has it changed?

As far as when the original project was put in, there's obviously when the special assessment was put in place, that was 2013, there's obviously been a lot of changes in competition. So now we're making some adjustments to kind of modernize and really kind of get the complex up to the standards it should be.

Because I remember that the, clubhouse isn't the right word, but anyhow, that went in first and then we started to grow. And to Councilman Kell's point, it developed all the fields and then the parking, kind of a sea of parking. So is all of that still going to happen?

Yes, so you'll still have everything in the middle. So you'll have the clubhouse, you'll still have those parking lots. Now we're just kind of developing around that and kind of extending those driveways and those parking lot access to make a smoother walk for parents or grandparents to get to those fields because right now if you park in the middle and you're playing on field eight you're walking a pretty good distance so putting those parking lots back kind of in those corners will allow those that distance to be a little bit shorter that's what i remember i spent a lot of time out there when none of that was there yeah i just wanted to see how sometimes it doesn't work out exactly as planned so you got all your plumbing and all your infrastructure in and what phase two right yeah okay thank you good thank you

I see no further questions or comments. I'd like to make one more.

I want to make sure that it's understood by the public that the transient guest tax funds are not from property taxes or sales tax. They come from people staying in hotels in town. This is not funny that we're... The citizens of Topeka are not necessarily paying it unless they're staying in a hotel. So this is money specifically for sunflower sports.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor. All right, with that, we have a motion to approve from Councilmember Kell, a second from Councilmember McGee. If there's no other comments or questions. We will take a vote.

Council Member Hofer, what's your vote?

Yes.

Okay, we have nine yes. The motion carries with Council Member Miller abstaining.

Thank you. Thank you, Justin. With that, we'll move on to Action Item C, City Clerk.

C is a development agreement between Sunflower Sports Association Inc. and the City of Topeka for the transient guest tax funded project titled Artificial Turf and ADA Accessible Concrete Pathway on Field 4 at the Sunflower Sports Complex.

City Manager. Thank you. Mayor and members of the governing body, as approved by the governing body in the last item, this item is the actual development agreement with Sunflower Sports Association for the use of TGT funds, including the quarterly payment schedule to construct the artificial turf and ADA accessible concrete pathway on field four at the Sunflower Sports Complex. I do recommend approval of this item. Josh is here. We're here to answer any questions you may have.

Anything you need to add, Josh?

Nope, nothing to add.

So this is basically to codify what we just did, right? Give you the ability to sign some contracts?

Yep.

Any other questions or comments from the governing body on this one? If not, I will always take a motion. Motion to approve from Council Member Banks. And a second from Council Member Bradbury. If there's no other final comments or questions, we shall take a vote.

And Council Member Hofer, what is your vote?

Yes.

Okay, we have nine yes. The motion carries with Council Member Miller abstaining.

Thank you, Josh. With that, we will move on to Action Item D, City Clerk.

D is a resolution introduced by the Public Infrastructure Committee recommending approval of project number 701028 for street improvements to Huntoon Street from Gage Boulevard to Harrison Street.

City Manager.

Thank you. Mayor and members of the governing body, as recommended by the Public Infrastructure Committee on August 18, 2026, this item will authorize just over 26 million for the voter-approved county-wide half-cent reconstruction project on Huntoon Street from Gage Boulevard to Harrison Street. Given that this is going to be a three-year construction project, I want to give this body an opportunity to hear more detail on this project before consideration. I do recommend approval of this item. With that, I will turn this over to Jason Tryon, Director of Public Works, and Jeff Lawley of Bartlett and West to lead us through this item. Gentlemen.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor, members of the governing body. So what we have before you tonight is a resolution approving a long-anticipated project on Huntoon. This is a project that will go from Gage Boulevard to Harrison Street. We'll include a lot of improvements to the street, utilities, and the pedestrian infrastructure along this path. I'll go ahead and turn it over to Jeff from Bartlett & West, who will take you through some of the details of the project.

Thank you, sir. So we have up on the street right now is just a highlighted area of where this project is affecting. So it'd be hunting street from gauge and it doesn't start just these two gauge actually goes through gauge for the waterline replacement and it goes a little bit past further West and ties in. So it goes from there, the intersection of gauge all the way East to Harrison. We're going to go through Topeka Boulevard, but we're going to leave Topeka Boulevard alone. The roadway itself, that would be a separate project. So as a part of this project, One of the things we heard about when we were here just a little under two years ago was about the size of the concrete paths, sidewalks that were out there. So initially we had them at 10 foot wide, but now they are 8 foot wide. That is the minimum width we can have for a shared use path and still call it a shared use path. That is continuous throughout the entire project. We have a driving lane that is continuous throughout the entire project. We have a six foot bike lane and a parallel parking that's eight foot wide. That is for most of the project, except for when we approach intersections at Oakley, Washburn, Lane, Topeka Boulevard, and McVicar. All those areas, we have turning lanes as we approach those intersections. And so we lose the parallel parking and the bike lane. And then we have green space and then a six foot concrete sidewalk on the south side. Again, all those items are mostly continuous throughout the entire project. And the driveway changes a little bit, so the spacing gets a little bit different. But for the most part, those are continuous everywhere. So construction, we're going to start at the east end, and we're going to work our way west. We're going to start at Harrison and go to Topeka Boulevard, stop short. We're going to keep traffic open on Topeka Boulevard, north-south the entire time. And we're going to skip over Topeka and go west, keep access open to the bank, and keep on heading west. And we're going to go to Harrison slash Fillmore and do a waterline tie-in there. And that's going to be the focus of the project. We're going to do all that work, and we're going to tie it in. Before we move further west, there will be no more opening up the entire corridor for the project for that year. It'll be approximately a half mile, get that done, and then go on to the next half mile and get our way through Lane, through Washburn, a little bit further west and tie into the alleyway behind Mulvane, and that is for utility reasons. So that is a lot to do in the first year. We'll also be installing a 12-inch water line through there. That's first year construction. Pick it up, 2028, and we'll be going from... Like Garfield, the alleyway between Garfield and Mulvane, and we're heading west to High. We're going to keep the north-south access to McVicker open as long as we reasonably can. Once the water line gets there, we're going to go through the intersection, take it out, put back the intersection temporarily until the roadway catches back up. So we're going to try and keep that open as long as reasonable. And then we're going to take construction to Oakley. And probably for the second year, we'll probably have to stop and just short of Oakley. We're considering maybe doing some work over the winter for the water line along Oakley. There's a lot of water line work up and down Oakley. So we don't want that to bog down year three construction and possibly affect those folks up and down Huntoon and Westboro. So we'll pick up at that area on Oakley. And this is still kind of up in the air. We're trying to coordinate with 17th Street Construction. But starting from the west side at Oakley, we're going to go through and stop just west of the Westboro construction, get all that done, get that opened up for those folks as quickly as we possibly can. and then we're going to go all the way to gauge everybody through there has enough room for us to provide access to their houses with an access road so we're gonna get all that out get that done get that put back as quickly as we can and then we'll move on to gauge and that would be the final part of the project doing the waterline ties and we're just replacing the pavement at gauge so that was a quick overview of the project Again, since we were last here, we have had a open house, basically, where we ask for the folks to come in and talk to us about the 12th Street project, lessons learned, what did you like, what did you not like. One of the things, obviously, they did not like is shoving three years of construction into two years. So that has changed. It's stayed three years of construction for this project. They didn't really like the tightness of the curb extensions that are out there. And they are close, and they're there for a reason to make it uncomfortable to speed. But on this project, they are, I think, maybe five feet away now from the driving lane instead of maybe two. So they're not as aggressive as they were before. The shared use paths, they didn't really like that it was discontinuous out there. It didn't really make a lot of sense. So we have all that going through there. So a lot of those comments we were able to incorporate into the Huntoon Street. They're not the same project, but they are similar. So whatever we could, we took those comments and applied those. And then we had an open house where we came in to hopefully hear from different folks about what they wanted to see on Huntoon. Applied those. We had a public meeting. Had a utility meeting. And then two more public meetings. The last one was in March of this year. And I went through my calendar before our meeting tonight to see how many meetings we've had with the public, with the city, with utilities. I think I stopped at 80. So there's probably more out there that I didn't have in there. But that's also with just private citizens that are out there. Folks that work in their own businesses, housing, whoever wanted to meet with us, we met with them. So just wanted to let everybody know that that's what we've been doing. We've been very busy over the last 18 months. So open up to questions.

So I just want to add before we move on to questions. One is that this project is funded by countywide half cent sales tax. So this is specifically funded from that measure that was passed by the voters in 2014. This project was included in that measure as a project specifically to be completed with those funds according to Complete Street Guidelines. So that's how we've designed the project. That's how the project is funded. And I just want to say thanks again to Jeff because I know he listed all the meetings he held, but I know he spent a lot of time in addition to that, knocking on doors, taking phone calls, talking to residents. The public engagement on this project has been outstanding, and that's a testament to him and his team.

Before I open up to the governing body, we have one individual signed up for public comment, Mr. Richard Carter. Welcome, sir.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. My name is Richard Carter. I reside at 3310 Southwest Westover Road. We are 26-year residents at that address. I attended two of the public meetings that Jeff mentioned on the Huntoon project. I believe there were, I think, four total that he covered. This will be simple. At one point on the renderings, there was a closure of Lakeside at Huntoon. I've seen another set of drawings that were dated April 2026 that show that Lakeside is in fact open at that point. If that's the case, I really have no issue. If that is not the final rendering of the project, I'm very opposed to that portion, which would be, I guess, phase three of the project, if Lakeside is closed or turned into a cul-de-sac at Huntoon. Mr. Mayor, that really concludes my comments. I have some others that relate to traffic in the neighborhood, but I think that's the important part right there about this project.

So Jason, can you clarify what the current status is of that piece of the project?

Correct. So we considered multiple options at that intersection throughout the project. Ultimately, what we've decided is not to do a cul-de-sac to keep access to Huntoon from Lakeside open. The intersection will be changed a little bit to add some improved safety. So instead of more of a gradual turn, It is designed to come to more of a T-intersection, encouraging people to come to a complete stop before proceeding on the Huntoon, whereas right now the configuration encourages some rolling stops, which we don't think is ideal.

Does that answer that, hopefully? Yes. Yep. Perfectly said. Thank you. We'll make sure that was the answer. Whether it's the answer you were looking for, does that answer the question? Trust, but verified. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

All right. We had no one else signed up for public comment on this. So I'll open up the governing body. Council Member Kell.

How much land, if any, is being taken from the homeowners on this project?

So very minimal. So most of this project is going to be absolutely within the public right-of-way that already exists. So in total, we have 95 property owners that are affected adjacent to this project. At this point, we have 85 of those 95 settled and agreed to for whatever compensation that they would be entitled to for the temporary access easements during construction or any right of way that is needed for construction. So 85 of the 95 have already been negotiated. The 10 that have not are all in the second or third year of the project. So we still have some time to work with those homeowners and understand how the construction is going to impact them.

And we actually haven't taken any property from anybody. Like Jason said, it's just temporary access. That's it. for this project.

So all this, nothing's going to be, you know, that's, this house is right on the property. Some of the retaining walls are right almost on the road. So none of those are going to be affected at all with this project.

We're not taking their property. We will affect some of their items that are out in the right of way. That's for sure. But we will not be doing anything where we take their property that's on their side of the right of way. So there are definitely items, like you're talking about, like retaining walls and things like that that are private items, but they are out in the city's right of way. And we still, if we can do it in a reasonable manner, we still try to maintain those as much as we can. But in the end, they are out in the city's right of way. So we do try and work with them when it's possible.

And we do have several places along this where we are going to be reconstructing driveways as part of this project because the geometry of the road and the geometry of the amenities required that. And so the city is taking care of those driveway access to make sure that the homeowners don't have to bear those costs. All right. Thank you.

I'll say it again. I know this is the guidelines that the city agrees to, but I don't agree with this one single bit, especially in the budget crunch we're under. We just need to keep it simple. Do as little as possible. Do it right, but do as little as possible. Adding bike lanes, shared youth paths, all this other stuff that costs all this extra money, especially for that stretch of road, is... something that I'm not in agreement with. I've never seen anyone on bike paths in Topeka. Everyone I've seen on a bike is out in the county. And most people that I've talked to when I've stopped when they're either on the trail or in the county, the ones I've stopped down on the trail said they would never bike in the city because it's too erratic. People come up behind them or turn out in front of them, things like that. And if you're trying to do $34 million around a bike and someone cuts you off, it's not a good situation for that bike rider. Like I said before, I understand these are our guidelines. I don't agree with our guidelines because we are in the budget crunch and we need to try to save as much dollars as possible. Thank you.

Deputy Mayor Hofer.

Okay, I have a few questions. I'll start with Jeff. Did we talk to, and Jason, did we talk to the fire department to make sure that the curb cut or the popped out curbs, that those are going to work with the turning radius of the big fire truck?

Absolutely. And so a couple things that we get questions on regarding those is, you know, what if traffic can't pull over and how's a fire truck going to get by? Those are absolutely designed for a fire truck to be able to drive right over those and do no damage to the infrastructure or to the fire truck. So absolutely, we work with the fire department and make sure that we have the appropriate radius for their apparatus and they can get where they need to go.

Okay, next question is sidewalks, because there are areas where we cannot get an eight-foot sidewalk in. Have we pared those down on the north side where we can't?

So I don't know.

Yeah.

So on the on the actual design is where we've looked where if there is a potential that it has to be choked down because of the existing greater because of the way the alignment of the street is, then yes, we would pare those down. And that's why when we had all these public meetings, You know, we had all the homeowners there. We had big maps out that we could actually look specifically at their property blown up and knowing exactly where these amenities would be on their property so they could see that very clearly.

Okay. Are we going to replace some of the trees that we have to take out?

Yes. So we do have in the project budget to install some street trees according to the guidelines that are adopted on the Complete Street Guidelines. We do have some trees that will have to be removed. A lot of that is due to the fact that the water lines are going to be excavated in this area, which will require some of those trees to be removed. But we do have budget in the project for street trees in the right of way.

OK. Are we going to, by phase, Back to the homeowners ahead. Do they know when you're coming and what their access to their homes is going to be?

Absolutely. So we have a construction meeting planned as soon as we have the contractor on board. But as part of the contract, they would be required to attend multiple meetings by phase where they will have an opportunity to speak with the homeowners, share their contact information, and understand how this is going to impact them and what to do if they're having problems.

OK, and then my last one is, how are we coordinating with the businesses? And in particular, I'm thinking of is Westboro Mart, because that's really going to mess with their businesses.

Absolutely. And we, as we were just discussing the possibility of some winter work as we get closer to Oakley, that's a conversation that we definitely want to have with them. We don't want to interrupt their Christmas shopping season. We want to understand what is workable for them and what we can do to accommodate those businesses. So those are some of the things that's a little bit further out in the project, but we'll absolutely be working with those businesses to make sure we're doing everything we can to maintain access to their business.

I'm thinking of somebody like the, well, it doesn't matter, VFW or whoever it is. Their only way in is going to be from 12th Street. They are going to have limited ways out. They have to come from the east to come in and they have to go back and go to the west. They don't have a two-way direction out. So that's going to hurt their people coming in for their and their dance nights and all that. So we're going to work with them also.

Absolutely. So that's also where, as part of the project, we'll have temporary access constructed where necessary to make sure that if we absolutely cannot get across to their entrance, given the construction, that we provide an alternate route either through a gravel pathway or, you know, doing things like putting a plate over the road to cover water line or utility work. We'll absolutely be doing those where necessary.

Okay. As I know behind Westboro Mart, they have one-way access around the back.

Mm-hmm.

And that's a tough. They've got to get trucks in there to deliver stuff. And it's going to be hard for them. It's going to be a major hardship.

We haven't looked at this specifically, but some of the things we've done on projects, on one-way projects, is to temporarily turn them into two-way traffic with signage. So that way folks, when they're coming from the east, they have access into those properties. We're happy to do that on other parts of this project as well. For homeowners that are a little stuck on Huntoon and they have to go the wrong way to get access to their house, we would probably do something similar for this area so folks can come in and out off of Oakley instead of being forced to find their way there and use it as a one-way.

I want to make sure we give them enough notice so they can make plans for their customers to get in.

Absolutely.

Okay, that's all I have, Mayor.

Council Member Miller.

Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Banks, I'm glad you didn't say nothing this time, as there's a lot of people who bike in this area. Good job. We'll listen. And he did not follow your advice, so I'm going to have to get on his neck for a second. Because complaining that people don't want to bike in the city while also being opposed to improved biking improvements in the city is confusing at best. But I appreciate what your sentiments are. I'm glad Deputy Mayor brought up the street trees. We've had some conversations with some constituents recently who have, I'll say one person who has brought up the thought of the street trees messing with their view at intersections. So I want to make sure that as we put those in, we're being thoughtful of the intersections and how those are perceived from a lot of different views. But I will say that I know we can do this the way that the information has been presented to the community and the opportunities that you guys have put forth with the open houses and the public meetings. I know we can do that for every single project. This is a huge project that's been developed a long time. So this is why you had to have so many meetings, because it's a big project, and it's going to cause some disruptions for some years. But the improvements that it's going to have are going to be some that we as a city should be proud of. I know 12th Street was an issue for people for a long time, and this is going to cause some of the same strife that we've learned from that 12th Street project. ways we can better allow people to access through the city in that corridor. But I 100% appreciate the amount of time and effort that you guys have been open, that you said 80 meetings. That's unheard of in projects, to my knowledge. So being so transparent about this project, being open to considerations and things that people have said for adjustments they need in their neighborhood, I want to commend you all for doing the work that you've done on this. You guys are doing a great job. Somebody brought up the cul-de-sac already, and we already know that's not a part of it, so I won't even mention that, although I guess I just did. But it is what it is. So thank you, fellas.

I appreciate you.

Council Member Kell.

Uh, just follow up on that. What I mean by no one uses, we have bike lanes in Topeka. I don't see people using them. I've talked to people that bike in the area. They don't use the bike lanes in our city. So why are we adding more bike lanes to something that's not even, you know, it's like investing in things that aren't, I understand that people, uh, There are some people that use them here and there, but to me it's not worth the cost that we do to add all these bike lanes throughout the city if they're never going to be used. I understand it's part of the parallel parking and all this kind of stuff on there, but it's one of those things of if people aren't using it, why do we keep on putting it out there for people to use? They use the trail, they use the county.

Council Member Miller. Let's move on.

Just real quick. I understand what you're saying.

I understand what you're saying. But you have to know that there's more people in the city that utilize bike lanes and that bike just besides the people that you know. There's a lot of people. There's a big community that bikes in this city.

Can I talk to people on the trail over in the county?

I don't want to go back and forth. It's not like that. But what I'm trying to make you understand is that there are others who will appreciate the Complete Streets projects that are being done that we've already agreed to do. I appreciate you. Thank you very much.

Council Member Banks. Thank you, Mayor. My question is for Jeff. I own a rental house just two blocks off the corner on Mulvane. And when we rent these houses, some of them have garages. And in the agreement that we make is for those tenants to use the garage. So there is a cost to the landlord and to the tenant, the renter, if they cannot use that garage. So as a city, are we going to compensate the owners for not being able to use the garage? Because many of them come right out onto Huntoon.

I would have to look at that one specifically, but wherever it's reasonable, we try to provide them access off the alleyway because most of those, not all, most of those garages are adjacent to an alleyway. Is this one one of those?

Well, this one goes, the alleyway goes right between the church and that little stretch there before that parking lot. Yeah. The house on the corner has the garage that's right on the alley, but it goes out on the Huntoon. My garage is not going to be affected, but there are about seven or eight along that stretch that's going to be affected.

For the most part, we provide access from the alleyways if possible. On other projects, we work with the landowners when they need to have access during certain times. If we had a work plan for the alley. We just don't do it until we have the roadway and their driveway ready to go, and then we'll move on to the alleyway. So we we definitely make sure that they always have access one way or the other.

I don't see how that's going to work for that house. It's right on the corner. I just don't see the alleyway because these people park their cars in that garage. And once that street is disrupted, there's not going to be a way to get to that garage. I just can't see that and I'm wondering how much would that affect the relationship between the tenant and the landlord as far as the agreement for them to have access to the garage.

That's a good point because we don't typically talk to the tenants. We usually have access and talk to the owners which I don't know if they would communicate down with that. But as far as I know, I'll have to take a look at that specifically. But we make a very strong effort to make sure that everybody has access during construction when it's possible. So I'll have to take a look at that specifically.

Thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Council Member Ortiz.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So I want to talk about Dr. Johnson's office at Oakley and Huntoon.

Mm-hmm.

Trust me, earlier this month I heard all about it. And they're worried about their tenants or their patients parking in the front. They park in the back of the building, which sits on the corner. And if you cut off the water, what are they going to do? Because, you know, we have appointments, longstanding appointments. My six-month appointment is already made. And they are very concerned about that. Now, I looked on there and it said that you guys had a meeting on March 26th of this year, or March of 2026 of this year. And then they're in phase three. They're going to forget about that. Are you going to go back and try to talk to them or what's going to happen? Because they have to have their water or they can't do business.

So typically we'll have so for a project like this, we will have multiple meetings as we move through the phases to let each of those homeowners that are going to be affected by the next phase of construction and business owners understand what the plan is going to be typically for a water line replacement. We're going to put in a temporary water line so that those businesses are only going to be without water for a short time period. So during the length of construction, they will still have water. There will be very brief periods of time where they do not have water, typically between two to four hours is what we tell them, and we'll put a temporary situation in. And there will be a lot of communication, both in terms of when we have those construction meetings and also going door to door before any water is interrupted to let them know this is what we're planning. How does that impact your business? Can we do this in the morning? Can we do this in the afternoon? What's going to be most effective for you? But a lot of those conversations are going to happen as we move throughout the project.

They work from 7.30 to 4.30. To say that they're going to be without water for two to four hours, that's a lot. That's a lot.

Understood.

So I don't know how we do that, but we need to really figure it out for them.

And unfortunately, when you're replacing water lines, there are always interruptions that have to take place that we minimize. But when we cut into that pipe, there are people that are currently being served by it that we can't maintain access to. So that's always a challenge on water line projects. But I think with this project, it's going to get us good infrastructure in place. It's going to prevent a lot of future disruptions where they could be out of water for a significantly longer period of time.

And I'm just asking, is there any way they can do something like on a Saturday and take their water down like on a Saturday as opposed to during the week? I'm trying to keep my dentist happy so he doesn't retire.

It's always good to keep your dentist happy because you don't want your dentist unhappy. Yeah, he's in my mouth, too. You're right. A lot of bad things can happen. But, no, we absolutely can do that in specific situations, and that would be something we would consider for a business that obviously is a medical establishment that can't work around a water disruption.

Can you please do that? OK, because I will give him the city manager's number, since the city manager, that's his office, too. Thank you.

Council Member Hiller.

Thank you, Mayor. I will support this project, always have. But kudos to both of you and your teams, because this really has been to most of the big meetings and goes through District 1 all the way from Eastside to McVicker. And so just wanted to offer that support and credit to you all. I have one caution just in case enough time has passed that we've forgotten. When 12th Street was done, you mentioned the bump outs earlier. When 12th Street was done, they were done based on the wheelbase of a fire engine. But one of the first things that happened was somebody who lived there who had a pickup and a trailer could not make that turn at all. So I would just encourage to double check, you know, what it would take for just a resident with a U-Haul or a car and a trailer to be able to make your turns before it's final, final, final.

Appreciate it.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Are there any other comments or questions from the governing body? No, it does not appear to be that case. So as always, a motion is always in order. We have a motion to approve from Council Member Banks. Do we have a second? We have a second from Council Member Miller. Are there any other comments or questions for staff before we take a vote? All right. Take a vote, please.

Council Member Hofer, what was your vote?

Yes.

Okay. Okay, we have eight yes. The motion carries with Mayor Duncan and Councilmember Kell both voting no.

Okay.

Joe. Yes, sir. All right. With that, we'll move on to our new action item E, which is the consent agenda item regarding police station improvements that Council Member Ortiz would like to have a conversation about. So I will turn it over to her, and we'll go from there.

Well, I just want more explanation on this, if I can get that from the city manager and staff.

Yes, ma'am. As part of this 2026 capital improvement plan, through this item, we're asking for council consideration of a contract for design-build services for HVAC and mechanical repairs at the law enforcement center. I do recommend approval of this item. With that, I'll turn it over to Jason to go through any other details.

So this project is actually part of a project that was brought to the Infrastructure Committee as a list of projects that were anticipated for 2026 and 2027. So it's a project to make some very long overdue HEAC improvements to the Law Enforcement Center. The scope of the project would include possibly replacing equipment, replacing VAV boxes interior. Also with a project of this nature, Because we're going to have to do so much above-ceiling work, there's a conversation of some additional improvements that could be made at the same time. For example, there's still a lot of fluorescent lighting in the LEC. Is this an opportunity that if we're going to tear those things out of the ceiling, we should go back with LED lighting? So we've put this as a design-build contract. So we did a bid, solicited for design-build teams. We have selected KBS as our design-build general contractor. And what we're asking the governing body to do today is approve that contract. This does not commit us to any funds at this point. KBS and their design team will come back to us with a list of pre-construction, an amount for pre-construction to do design documents, preliminary work. give us a recommendation for how much that will cost. I would anticipate that is above $50,000, which is why we brought it to the governing body tonight. But then once we have an amount that we would actually be committing the city to, we would bring this project back to the infrastructure committee because it will be an over $250,000 project. But at this point, we don't have a full scope of work. We need our design team to start working on that so we can give you a project that you know what you're going to get with the funds we have allocated.

Do we know when the Sheriff's Department is moving out?

Do you know something I don't?

Well, they're going to take over the...

So no official notice has been provided to us that they will be vacating their facility.

Okay, maybe that's something I'll look into.

So I can tell you we have been in discussion with the Sheriff's Department for their share of the building costs and to be involved in some renovations that they would like to see happen on their side of the building.

You know they're taking back the Harley Davidson...

I have heard that the county does own that facility, whether that would be that they would be completely vacating the current LEC or just a portion of their services would move to that building. They have not said specifically what their intentions are.

And that might be interesting, too, because, you know, Mayor, I did learn the treasurer's office is moving out of the courthouse. They're going to move them totally out of the courthouse and make it nothing but a straight courthouse. So they've got to move them somewhere. So that's something I'll look into. Okay. Thank you, Jason. Appreciate it.

Any other questions or comments on this item? If not, I'll move to approve. Second from Councilmember Kell. There's no other comments or questions. Clerk, take a vote please.

Councilmember Hofer, what is your vote?

Yes.

Okay, we have 10 yes. The motion carries.

All right. Unless I'm incorrect, that is now the end of our action items. We'll move on to non-action items. We'll start with non-action item A, which is now utility rates. So I guess city clerk.

All right.

A is a discussion established regarding utility rates for 2027 through 2030 and amending Topeka Municipal Code Sections 130520 through 130560 and repealing original sections.

City Manager. Thank you. Mayor and members of the governing body, as we have been discussing this item since June 2nd, we've had the opportunity to receive multiple points of feedback. And this evening we'll brief you on our recommended utility fee schedule that removes the base charge and is programmed to bring commercial industrial rates more in line with the per gallon charges assessed to our residential customers. However, over the last week, we've received feedback that there may be a council consideration to include in the rate structure a delayed ramp-up period for commercial and industrial users in year one. We can certainly build that ramp-up period into our rate structure, but we would need council guidance in order to do that. With that, I'll now turn this over to Sylvia Davis, Director of Utilities, to lead us through this item. Sylvia.

Thank you, Sylvia.

Thank you. Good evening. So we've had lots of discussion. And to prevent adding lots of more Information, numbers, new information. I'm just going to summarize what I sent to you all on Thursday. Thursday, we sent you a memo that tried to break down as simply as possible the proposal that you have in front of you for consideration. So that ordinance outlines new rates for 2027, 28, 29, and 33. that took into account lots of information that we have received through our public engagement opportunities, through our discussions with council. And in a nutshell, what that did was move us to consider eliminating customer classes and implementing a standard consumption rate over the next four years. So stair-stepping over the next four years into one rate per 1,000 gallons for every customer, regardless of whether or not you are residential or commercial or industrial. It eliminates, again, this is the proposal that we submitted to you on Thursday and is up for consideration tonight. It was on action. Now we're just discussing. But it eliminated multifamily industrial two classifications and, again, stair-stepped those increases for commercial and industrial rates. it very much reduced the increase rate impacts to our residential customers. So to keep those impacts as low as possible, it ended up forcing us to push those increases more towards commercial and industrial classifications. We proposed no increase to meters, to the base charges for meters under two inches in size. but included increases to volume charges. We also propose an increase to wholesale rates, irrigation rates, and we maintain the current outside city multiplier. So what that looks like on a chart is You can see highlighted in blue there for 2026, the base rate for someone that has a meter, a five-eighths inch meter under one inch was $18.22. You can see over the next four years that base charge did not change in this current proposal. When we got up to the larger meters, two inches and up, we applied a 10% increase to base charge each year. for volume charges, you can see that this accounted for again all these numbers in this proposal. Just to keep it simple so you weren't weighing different options, this proposal on Thursday accounts for eliminating the current practice of assessing base charges to inactive properties. So if you are a landlord and you do not have a tenant for six months while you're fixing up the property, this proposal takes that into consideration where we would not be charging water and wastewater-based charges to those properties. So we ended up adding a very small amount to account for the deficit that that caused by not doing that. So you see the rates for volume charges over the next four years here. I'm just breaking that out. So again, to kind of simply walk through this and you see at the end in 2030, you see everyone at one common volume rate of $8 and 20 cents per thousand gallons. So that is what we proposed to you on Thursday. This proposal was still a reduction from what we had brought to the governing body early on. So early on, the impacts to our industrial two customers was so impactful. Again, throughout those conversations with our industrial partners, we worked to get that down in 2027. but applied more increases in 2028 to account for that. So this is just Thursday. Now, following that discussion, we've had multiple conversations with a request, what would it look like if we still tried to consider something different? Maybe something that didn't apply those increases so heavily on the industrial side and our large commercial users. So we went back to the table and crafted something for you to consider. And tonight I'm going to walk through that, and I'm hoping to answer additional questions that you all might have so that we can get more clear, maybe some sort of consensus from the group on really which way we want to go so that we can, instead of continuing to draft multiple ordinances, have something that everybody feels at least they understand it in a way that they feel very comfortable voting on that. So again, we just walked through the current proposal. An alternate consideration that we have explored and done the math on led us to creating two standard volume rates, one for residential customers, one for commercial and industrial customers. Again, phased in over the next four years. Increased rate impacts to residential customers in 2027, but very minimal increases in 28, 29, and 30. Reduced rate impacts to those commercial and industrial classifications that were so heavily impacted so that everyone in year one and beyond, no one sees a double digit increase. Includes increases to all base charges and increases to volume charges. Increases to wholesale rate consistent with what we had already proposed irrigation rate consistent with what we had already proposed and continues to maintain that outside city rate multiplier. It also eliminates the current practice of assessing base charges to inactive properties, again, formerly known as readiness to serve. I believe on your second slide, the printed versions that you all have have an added bullet. I asked Dan to present this version because that was an error. So what is officially submitted on record will show that one change on slide two. But that is consistent with this last bullet. So what does that look like? You can see for this alternate consideration, it would not maintain no change to base. We do show an increase of 4.5% for base rates for those smaller meter sizes each year. For the larger meters, they would see a 10% increase to the base charge in 2027, but then follow that same pattern of 4.5% over the next three years. And then when we look at volume charges, you can see this walks us into a single residential rate of $8 and 30 cents in 2030. And then a rate for commercial industrial and industrial two of $7 and 26 cents per 1000 gallons. I hope that that helps illustrate a major consideration that we have taken into account up for discussion. And I would just want to highlight every time we take a stab at something new, it's a considerable amount of time that we then have to spend in that rate model. to vet those changes out and see what impacts those have over time. So that's why I want to hopefully get to a point tonight where everyone feels passionately one way or another so that maybe we can land on something that everyone, again, may not completely agree with but at least feels comfortable voting on. And with that, I will sit for whatever questions you might have. And I know Nicole is online as well if I need to phone a friend.

All right. Before I open up to the governing body, we have several individuals signed up for public comment. So we will start there. First up, we have Jeff Adair.

Thank you. Good evening. Again, my name is Jeff Adair. I'm the Director of Facilities Management at Research Fine Foods. First off, I'd like to thank the City Utilities Department, particularly Sylvia, for her patience and understanding while answering my numerous, I'm sure agonizingly monotonous questions. She was very helpful and helped me put these increases in terms that I could understand and pass along. Researchers in the City of Topeka have long had a strong partnership for more than 30 years supporting jobs, investment and industrial growth in this community. We understand that infrastructure and operating costs increase and we are committed to paying our fair share. An increase of this size over a short period of time often creates real planning challenges for large employers and industrial users alike. Research is part of Topeka, and we want future growth and job creation to continue here. What we'd really like is to continue to work together with the city on a balanced rate plan that supports both cities' needs and continued business investment in Topeka. So basically, the summary of this is we want to be on board, and we want to help figure this out. We don't want to be standing on the sidelines and just waiting for it to be delivered to us. We want to be a working part of the solution. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up, we have Rhiannon Friedman.

All right. Good evening, Mayor, members of the governing body. I'll keep my comments abbreviated since this has moved to discussion, but some things I do want to touch on. I really want to give a shout out to Sylvia Davis, who has been super responsive to emails and phone calls and questions as I started getting them from our manufacturers, other industries that fall into the heavy industrial water users group. with questions, concerns, but she was amazing, very responsive and helpful, so I completely appreciate that. I will share a couple of the overarching themes that I heard in the handful of discussions that I had, and Jeff hit on a few of them, but definitely understanding that the cost of infrastructure has increased and understanding that heavy users need to pay their fair share. Another thing that came up as a common theme was that not only do local industries here compete against similar companies and other manufacturers, but they also compete across their companies nationally across other areas where investment might seem like a better place to invest their dollars if that area is more competitive in rate structure. and what it's able to do to provide to that local company. So I think just in an effort to maintain competitive here in Topeka and Shawnee County and continue to help support our local businesses and attract new ones that want to come here, I think it's important that we have these discussions. And everyone that I talk to is completely happy to belly up against the table and be a part of the hard work that needs to be done. And I would expect me and my team to be there too and happy to help convene however we can. Thank you.

Thank you. Next up, Danielle Twimlow.

I have one for everybody. I brought you pictures this time. I am going to stick to what I prepared instead of addressing the ridiculousness of this discussion because we don't seem to have that much care for the people who are paying more than their fair share of the percentage of their income. um for water utility so i want to bring to the point of why we have to investigate quite a bit further on our utility rates because for one we don't even have any alternate structure system it's very widely known that the rate system that we are using is way outdated. It is not equitable. No new information has been provided of that. But what I do want to show you is the inconsistency we've been given over and over again. In 2025, I asked what linear feet of water main replacement do we have? I was given an email with a chart of the linear feet and the miles and the cost. It was recently asked yet again. A memo was provided with the years, the linear feet, the cost. None of it is remotely similar, not even close. And some of it by four plus miles. So then I went one step further. I went to our own city's information, our own checkbook that is now a website that we don't use any longer, but we can still access that information, to try to look for other types of information. Just where can I have any sort of information about where our utility rate money is going? But it drew me to the revenue bonds. And just one, just one specific project in our CIP just jumped out at me because I saw it over and over again. And that showed up in 2018 for a project. And you'll have the project number with the project amount for out by the Home Depot Distribution Center. And that was on the CIP to be slated for 2022. Kind of shows up on other CIPs. And then in 2022, in our operational budget on that website that's no longer one that we use, It shows that in 2022, we the exact same project name, exact same project number and exact same amount on our CIP was approved and used in 2022. It is in our operation budget. But then the next year, it's not in our CIP anymore. The next year, it's not in our CIP anymore. And then a couple years later, the same project shows up in a CIP, but not in a project name. It's just in the base of the project, just listed, grouped in with a bunch of other projects, with a whole new project number and a whole new project amount. so where did that 2022 money that went into our budget we we bonded it we approved it received it it's in our budget where did that go because what you'll also see that i provided you is that project wasn't done There's no pipes that lead behind Home Depot past Target. None of that was upgraded. We shouldn't have to be looking that far and that closely to be able to have a paper trail of where our funds are being spent. And it could be well explained. However, you're asking more and more and more of us with never providing new answers. This should be simple. I'll talk more about how the paper trail and the documentation is something that should be given very easily and should be available to everyone, especially if you're asking us to keep funding more. I just want to know where this money is going. I want to know what my funds are going to. And if I can see that pay off, it'd be easier.

Thank you. All right. With that, we'll turn to the governing body, Councilmember Kell.

First of all, Mr. Twemlow, if you have a digital copy of this, could you email it? Because I'm blind as a bat, and I can't read that. So thank you. First, yes, our industrial and commercial customers bring a lot to the city. But the city and the county and organizations like JADO give a lot to those organizations. So there is a push and pull in that aspect of things. We help them out just as much as they help us out by providing jobs and things like that, but just to wanting to help figure out what's going on with the rates and stuff, we'll try to share as much information as possible, but while we're working through this, we can't be certain on anything until we vote on it. Now, on the base rate charges, let's say we're replacing... we're going through and replacing water meters and someone hasn't been inactive for 10 years and we're replacing meters. Do we replace one on an inactive house that's been 10 years?

Are you asking if we did replace it?

No, I'm saying do we? Let's say we were going down a stretch of road and replacing all the meters on a stretch of road. Let's say there's an accountant that's been active for 10 years. Do we replace that meter?

When we initiated readiness to serve, we reached out to property owners that had accounts that have been inactive for a very long period of time. Those that we heard back from, we were able to disconnect. When we were doing meter replacements, they were replaced before this process started. Now we consider that, try to reach out to the customer to verify whether or not they still want to have an active meter. But if there's currently a meter there during the meter replacement program, they were replaced.

That's where I look at keeping that base charger inactive accounts because that meter's got to be paid for by somebody. And if we're just going to have so many accounts out there that are inactive, that's where... we can't just have the neighbors pay for it, that person's beater, if they're never going to, you know, they get the opportunity if they want to have it removed and they have no charge whatsoever. But if they're just going to leave it there and not use it and we go to replace it, that goes on to all the other customers of the city. So to me, that's where the base charge on all accounts, active, interactive, should stay in. Because if we're paying for that infrastructure through water mains and meters and they decide not to be active for five, ten years, whatever the case may be, and we go to replace it, that cost doesn't go on that person. It goes on the payers of the active accounts. So I believe that charge should stay there so that way it can pay for the infrastructure that they may choose one day to use. And if they choose not to use it at this time, they can have their meter replaced.

Council Member Miller.

Thank you, Mayor. Danielle brings up very simple questions that should be able to have answers. And I imagine that we can provide that answer. Could you please?

I'm going to first of all, I don't know what project is being referenced. So once I get that information, I can respond back to that particular one. But in general, Nicole and I have discussed some of the discrepancies that come through some of our annual reporting when it comes to line replacement project completion. And I'm going to let her respond to that if she can hear me.

Okay, yeah, I wasn't looking for a straight, clear answer right now.

Okay, okay, that's great. Maybe Nicole can spout it off, but then we can follow up just with more detail.

Nicole's very talented. I imagine she could spout it out if she wasn't frozen.

She's frozen now. Okay.

We can hear you. Your video froze, but I think we can hear you.

Okay. Very difficult. No, maybe not. And so we have worked meaningfully to identify the year that they are capitalized. That was identified when the unit was received.

Nicole, Nicole, you're cutting out, so we're just going to, you can send us, you can send us and Danielle some follow-up information.

Okay, okay. But yes, we will get you that information so that you can understand a little bit of, I can't say that it accounts for every discrepancy, but in general.

Okay. Thank you very much. And this rate increase, just for clarity for everyone, do you anticipate rates after 2030 getting back to normal or is that going to be the norm going forward?

So that's a very good question. What I anticipate, if we can come to some consensus and get a rate passed for the next four years, that really sets the city of Spica up very well to... I mean, some of the questions that have been asked through this process are very good questions that we have internally debated, and we do not have the resources to provide answers to some of that. So what this does is, one, helps us get some very... urgent projects going and hopefully completed in that time, allows us to continue to support the public works projects that are ongoing, and in that time, get a new RFP out because to Ms. Twimlow's point, we do have an antiquated and older rate model that we are using, so it gives us time to get a study done, a new rate study, gives us options to consider. What does Topeka want? What fits better for Topeka? And then lots of time for very thoughtful discussion with all of our partners, the governing body, so that we can determine what those rates look like past 2030 in discussions and just modeling in general. it sets us up really well for much lower rate that we can potentially set for much longer term. So everybody knows here's what we're looking at.

Wonderful. Thank you very much. I, and I hope that, uh, the city and this governing body will do some, some work towards making sure that we're able to lower rates after this, uh, may or may not happen. Um, because I think we owe not just the citizens, but those, those, uh, companies that I'm happy to hear are willing to come to the table and understand the complexities of, of the situation. that they're willing to work with us. I'm glad that they're coming to the table and understanding that. So I hope that down the line, those developments that may go somewhere else, if they're going to come here for 30 plus years, then they would understand that a little five-year crunch would be something that they should understand and still want to bring their further development this way. So thank you very much.

Council Member Bradbury. Bradbury, sorry.

Thank you. I just had a question. When you were talking about evaluating processes and sending out an RFP, are you thinking that's going to happen after 2030 or in this time frame?

No, in this time frame. Starting next year, we will dive right into that. We're reviewing the last RFP that was sent out. looking to update that and getting that process started early because you all know that with everything that touches the city, the governing body for consideration, departments for consideration, time flies. So we need to start now, start early, so we can get some data back and then, again, give us plenty of time to weigh all of those options for whatever the new rate structure might look like.

Council Member Hiller.

Mayor, I just want to say thank you, Sylvia, to you all. Personally, I'm eager to have a full discussion around the table tonight or sometime really soon. I appreciate that. I think you heard us when you did the first version about a serious concern that we had before for those of us who were here then about keeping the base rate low. and then having the use rate be the part that would fluctuate so that people would do their best to monitor their own usage if that was an issue. Yet I also see how it spun up to the industrial rates, and I'm comfortable with rolling it back for a little different balance. per the work that you did, kind of whatever the majority feels like. But I really appreciate all the thought that you went into with it and the industrial folks stepping up and speaking up, but also saying they could help make it work. Thank you.

Questions or comments, Macquarie? Okay. But here's where we're at, just so everybody knows. At some point, whether we vote it up, whether we vote it down, we need to know what we want to work from as our template now. We've had these discussions for multiple months, and great, we can continue to have them, but we need to kind of know what template we want to work from, so you can determine which way you want to vote, so you can come forward with amendments to at least what we're working off of. And so at this point, we have two proposals in front of us. So I'm going to ask, I guess, for a straw poll. And even if you're going to vote against everything, which is perfectly fine, at least maybe help me guide which one you want to vote against later, that's OK too. But I'd like to know, because I think staff needs the direction, I think the public needs the direction, to know which of these we want to start working from. And that would be option one, which is the proposal from last week, or option two, which has been put together with a few changes to the commercial industrial rates after we heard those concerns. So I'm going to go around the room, put you all on the spot. And again, you're not committing yourself to a single thing except what will be back in front of us when we continue this discussion as our template to work from moving forward. Does that give you the direction staff needs to better understand what we're trying to work towards?

Absolutely. With the addition of, to Councilman Kell's point, if there's, again, passion one way or another when it comes to applying base charge, on inactive accounts. We can call it readiness to serve to keep it simple for everyone if that helps. But if there's strong opinions to that, that changes a lot.

What I'll tell everybody is you hear me say on budget, CIP, and now the water rates is IF WE'VE GOT SOMETHING TO WORK FROM AND YOU HAVE AMENDMENTS TO BRING FOR DISCUSSION FOR US TO TALK ABOUT, GREAT. BRING THOSE AMENDMENTS AND HAVE THOSE READY OVER THE NEXT COUPLE WEEKS AS WE CONTINUE THIS CONVERSATION. AND YOU CAN TALK WITH STAFF ABOUT WHAT THAT AMENDMENT WOULD LOOK LIKE. THEY'RE MORE THAN HAPPY TO HELP YOU ON IT. EVEN IF THEIR POSITION IS DIFFERENT, THEY WILL ALWAYS AT LEAST HELP YOU ON THAT AMENDMENT. SO IF YOU HAVE A PREFERENCE, IT WOULD BE NICE TO KNOW TO PROVIDE STAFF SOME DIRECTION. SO I'LL JUST, ONE IS ONE, SO YOU GET TO GO FIRST.

Well, I'm flexible about it, but I will say, since I get the mic, that I think we need to bring it in for a landing. The industrial folks especially asked last time for a year out. We're now three months out, and we need to decide this. So I encourage with you, anybody who has some specific thoughts, get them right in like this week and let us get it done.

All right, so I'm going to flip a coin for you. Yeah, because we're about to be out of color.

Thank you. I don't have an option of one or two, and it's not because I'm not going to be voting for any utility rate increase because I won't be. But even with that said, in my gut, which is what I try to follow as much as possible, I think that we need an audit before we do anything.

Thank you.

Council Member Ortiz. And again, you don't have to tell me whether you love it or like it. You can. That wasn't my goal, was to make everybody happy.

Well, you can't tell me. No, I know.

I just don't want to feel that pressure. I feel like maybe I put that on. I didn't mean to do that.

I don't feel it, and I'm undecided right now. I'd like to meet with Sylvia Davis. Thanks.

Mr. Banks.

I would support the proposal that she brought forth tonight, although I would like to sit down and have some discussion about tonight's proposal just so it's a little clearer for me. Thank you.

Council Member Kell.

I'm undecided as well. I'd like to sit down with the director, and I truly believe we need to keep those inactive accounts there because if they're part of the infrastructure, they should be paying for the infrastructure. Thank you.

Council Member Miller.

Thank you, Mayor. I'll go ahead and make this decision of where we eat. Anyway, the current proposal I think is good. I'm not really for the alternate consideration. I think I'll go with the current proposal.

Council Member Bradbury.

Undecided.

Council Member McGee.

I'm leaning towards the one that was brought up tonight. I'd like to hear some input from our industrial commercial partners. Thank you.

Deputy Mayor.

Well, I'm a little bit of a loss because I've only seen the numbers that we put on the screen tonight and I won't get a chance to look at them for several days.

Fair enough. We'll get it to you.

I'm probably leaning towards the second one because I know what courage for industrial customers and I know the hardship they can be.

All right, believe it or not, that was helpful. We'll get together and connect with some of these council members and go from there.

And in that time, like I said, with the new information we provided tonight, I do have some impacts of what that looks like for the average customers. I just know that that's a lot of information when I simply email it. So sitting down, getting some meetings scheduled right away will help us walk through that. So thank you, guys. Can I?

Yes, Council Member Bradbury.

There are those of us that would prefer all the information in an email because scheduling a meeting is difficult. Okay.

All right. I don't see anything else, so we will move on to our next non-action item, which is now non-action item B regarding a city auditor, city clerk. Thank you.

B is a discussion regarding the Citizen Government Review Committee recommendation to create the Office of the City Auditor.

City Manager.

Thank you. Mayor and members of the governing body, as recommended by the Citizen Government Review Committee and for governing body discussion by the Policy and Finance Committee, this item will discuss the creation of the Office of City Auditor. Given the background of this item, I'll defer the lead off of this discussion to the Chair and members of the Policy and Finance Committee.

Thank you very much. There was a memo sent out from the staff when it comes to the City Auditor, the Citizen Government Review Committee and their recommendation. And I'll just give a quick synopsis of that. That was from July 21st of 2025. The citizen government review committee recommends amending the city charter to establish an independent city auditor's office. The city auditor would be appointed by the governing body and would serve at its pleasure with an audit committee of the council providing direction. The auditor would conduct both financial and performance audits and advise the council, mayor, and city manager. The committee also recommends consulting professional resources in other cities to determine the most appropriate responsibilities for the position. To establish the office, the governing body would need to approve a charter ordinance by a two-thirds vote, followed by publication for two consecutive weeks and a 60-day enactment period. An audit committee could be established separately by resolution with a simple majority vote. If the auditor were also given authority to implement recommendations administratively, additional charter changes would be required. Those changes would require two-thirds vote, a public notice, and ultimately a voter approval through an election. Staff notes that based on the election schedule and required notice periods, The earliest possible election for the charter change would have been and I'm changing the dates a little bit because of how long the memos got. We would be March 2nd of 2027 with the December 2nd, 2026 deadline for the governing body's action. Nick, did I get any of that wrong?

No, I believe that is correct.

Boom. Okay. Now. As I have said before, I don't believe we have city employees and officials who wake up trying to cheat and deceive staff, council members, and ultimately the citizens of Topeka, no matter what some emails and whatnot and whatever else social media says. The people I know or have had the pleasure of meeting who work for the city do good work and are usually pretty proud of that work. Are mistakes made from time to time? Sure. That's gonna happen when you're doing the work we all do in our own way and whatever our roles are. The truth is the same about every single profession. No one or system is ever perfect. Is there room for improvements and further efficiency? I'm sure there is. When doing any work with different and or new staff members, access to resources and developing technologies, better ways of doing things can arise. What's important is that we consider those different ways to operate. You do so without sacrificing safety and attention to detail when you are dealing with taxpayer dollars and the safety of those citizens. That is why the committee and I believe that this recommendation is one that should be done for the city. Personally, I don't believe it should be done with the city employee who has their salary. Insurance and livelihood depend on the same departments they are auditing. Not from the city side, I just feel that the impartiality of the auditor side could and would be questioned and should be a good part of this discussion. My recommendation is that we start this with a contract, which is contrary to the committee's expert on the matter, but I certainly think it should be considered. Now, that would possibly bring up some confidentiality and other issues with allowing a contracted client the type of access that is only afforded to the city manager's office and the governing body, but that's something I hope we can work out for that to work. If contracting is not the route, I still support bringing on an auditor to further show our commitment to transparency and doing the work for the people of Topeka. And with that, I know Councilmember Bradbury has something to say on this as well.

Thank you. This is something that I have supported from the beginning. So their report describes the auditor as a vital source of independent objective oversight and responsibilities would include conducting the performance and financial audits, handling whistleblower reports, evaluating consultant compliance with governing body objectives and advising on risk management. I brought this forward to the recommendation, forward to the Policy and Finance Committee because for several reasons, one of which we're facing a serious budget shortfall, recurring concerns about operational issues, and declining public trust. performance audit would help uncover some efficiencies and help improve operations at a time when we have significant budget challenges. Topeka remains the largest city in Kansas without a city auditor, and this would bring the city in line with best practices, increase transparency, and provide the governing body with independent insight that we currently lack. With the city facing significant fiscal challenges and increasing concerns about operational performance, establishing a city auditor offers a practical and widely trusted means of advancing these objectives.

Any other members of the committee? Okay. The city attorney.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I have one clarification.

The memo, as you stated, is a little bit old. At that time, what was being used there by the attorney who drafted that was the 90 days required by statute. We've since learned that our county likes 120 days. So bump that last date there up by a month, essentially. So we'd be looking probably to the end of October to have something overdue.

So I have a question. Under the law, under our charter, whatever version you want to use, Are we as a governing body allowed to enter into a secondary contract with an outside contractor to do work on our behalf? And the reason I ask that is, as we've looked at this process, if we want eventually that position to report directly to the governing body, we need a charter change. So for that to happen, it at some point needs to go before the voters to give us that authority. Correct. So everyone's on the same page on that piece of it. Right. But whenever that would come, if we wanted to start this process before that vote was taken to at least get that person in-house to doing this work, BUT STILL HAVE SOME AUTONOMY THAT WE WANT REPORTING IN SOME FORM OR FASHION TO THE GOVERNING BODY, THE OPTIONS I GUESS NOW THEN WOULD BE A, WE GO AHEAD AND HIRE THAT INDIVIDUAL WHO UNDER OUR CURRENT RULES WOULD STILL REPORT TO THE CITY MANAGER AND THEN WE AS THE GOVERNING BODY WOULD WORK WITH THE CITY MANAGER TO MAYBE DEFINE THAT THEY COULD REPORT MORE TO US EVEN THOUGH THERE'S AN ISSUE THERE. OR TWO, IS THAT A VIABLE OPTION

to hire that individual as a governing body on contract until such time the voters gave us direction as to what they wanted us to do i would probably want to double check but my i would probably say yes that would be correct so long as you did not if they made recommendations specific recommendations and if those recommendations had to do with anything administrative you could not act on those right but we could go to our city manager and staff and say

We'd like to see these recommendations and then have those conversations from employer, employee, staff, and everybody.

I would say that's a likely path. Again, I'd probably want to verify that, but yeah, I would say that's probably.

Okay, I think that's good to know for this conversation, so thank you. Council Member Kell.

Just clarification questions. Will we still use the auditor for our financials, or would this person be taking over that position also?

No, we would have to still use an independent outside auditor for that yearly audit, both for some legal reasons that are in statute and also it's a good practice because that would be a different kind of audit and that person doesn't work for us in any capacity. So yes, we would still do that on top of everything else.

This is one of those things that I agree with it. I think this is something that we're... What was it? One other city above us doesn't have one, but I think it was Lawrence or something like that doesn't have one. But all the other major cities have one, so I think it's a good practice. But again, we are getting knocked for being top-heavy and having high salaries. And just looking at what some of these other positions make, it's $75,000 to $125,000. So it's one of those things of... it's how many people we're going to have to cut in the future now out of our budget when it comes to positions to fill this position. So it's one of those catch-22 situations. So I agree we need one, but, again, right now it's a hard decision to make.

Thank you. Just to answer that question, I've talked with Josh. We could slot this into the 27 budget without, I mean, some things that would be rearranged, but, again, no one's going to get out of a job if we bring this individual in. I'm going to let Council Member Valdevia Akula speak, but I forgot we had two people signed up for public comment, but I'll go ahead and, she had signed up, so go ahead. Well, I just, I want to keep this note.

Okay. Thank you, Mayor. I commend the committee for doing the hard work and the dialogue that came for making this decision, and I commend you, Councilwoman Bradbury, for bringing this to the forefront. I think that the deep agreement I have is because of things that I brought up, the deficit that we have, the number of whistleblower complaints we've had, whether they're classified as official whistleblowers or not, the deep concern that community has, the calls that I had heard that I agreed with with forensic audit. But to me, the level of what a city auditor could bring would be in stark contrast, I believe, to what we're having now with our annual audit. And I think that if these discussions continue, we should have a breakdown for the full governing body to educate ourselves on the type of auditing positions that there are and the degrees to what they can and cannot investigate. I've also sent an email to the city manager stating that upon Deputy Braxton Copley's leaving the city that that vacancy should not be filled. I believe that with the city manager in the position and Assistant City Manager Avery um, that there is more than enough. And we have heard continuously about, uh, there is a lot of upset by the public. And at first I did support the three, but I definitely was wrong on that one. So I think that what we could also consider is that if that position is not filled, that we could utilize those funds for a permanent position. I also believe that we need to start this sooner rather than later because whether you listen to social media, it's a dime a dozen for everything that you can hear, but whether you're really talking to people at your NIAs, at your community meetings, when you're having meetings on different issues where issues with the city come up, is that a number of folks have lost faith in us. And that could be for any number of reasons. And I think that if we are going to want to put these sales tax initiatives on the ballot, we need to give the people proof that we hear their concerns. And I believe that that's why it is imperative that we start this as soon as possible. Thank you.

Thank you. As I said, we did have two people signed up for public comment. First up, Mr. Jim Kalb.

Mayor, council member, good evening. My name is Jim Kalb, 4804 Southwest Brentwood Road. I had the opportunity to serve as the chair of the 2025 version of the Citizens Government Review Committee. First of all, I wanted to thank the members of the Policy and Finance Committee for the work they did, the time they spent, and for agreeing to bring this forward. So thank you, Council Members Miller, Bradbury, and Banks. Thank you. If my comments are a little bit out of whack compared to what you've just heard amongst your peers, forgive me, but I have to go back. and watch the video of this and read the closed captioning in order to get the fine points of what each council member said. I'm sorry, the technology works, but not as well as it should. Final report of the Citizens Government Review Committee, which was given to you back in June of last year, had seven recommendations to it. One of the recommendations was to establish a city auditor position and make that as part of the charter. The expectation was that that would lead to greater efficiency and economy in the city's provision of services and programs, and there would be resulting savings to the city taxpayers. I know you have this in front of you already and you have my handout. The committee, the review committee, recommended appointment of the auditor by you guys, by the governing body, with the auditor to conduct both performance audits and have the capacity to also do financial audits. Direction would come from a council audit committee. The auditor would advise the mayor, the city council, and the city manager and serve at the pleasure of the governing body. I know you've just had discussion about contract versus creating the position, and I just have a couple quick thoughts about it. Half a loaf is better than no loaf, but I think if you go forward with any discussion of creating a position or having a contract auditor in any shape or form, I really would urge you, and this runs through the handout, to take a look at the information that's available from the Association of Local Government Auditors. And the work that they have, the handouts that they have, the materials that they have, it is designed specifically to advise folks like you that are considering, elected officials considering, creating an audit position. There's a lot of material. Some of it, a few pages of the material is online or in paper form in the attachments behind my testimony. But I think you need to think carefully about the merits of an in-house position, a full-time audit position versus a contractor. One of the first things that comes to mind and I know I'm eating my time up here, Mayor, but one of the first things that comes to mind is just are you going to be able to find somebody? Are you going to be able to find somebody that would do it on a contract basis? And getting the allegiance to the city that you would expect from an independent professional auditor who's on the payroll, paid by the taxpayers directly and accountable to you all by virtue of the office that's created. I also think that... I was actually a performance auditor myself, okay, for a couple years with the Legislative Division of Post Audit right out of law school before I went to the League of Municipalities. So I know a little bit about the subject matter. But having a performance auditor who was coming in the door with folks having the knowledge that this person is on a contract basis, may or may not be around next year or next month or next week, versus dealing with a city auditor that is created by virtue of amendment to the charter and having that stability and that importance to the city.

Jim, do you need an extension? Do you need the extension? Oh, boy, do I really? You get two minutes, but that's it. Two minutes.

Okay.

Any objections?

Thank you, Mayor. Well, I'll get back to something. I just, you know, Chairman Miller, you know, I don't know everything you said, and I want to take it seriously and respectfully of the comments you made. But I just that's what I'm coming from is, you know, I'm voicing not just my personal view, but the view of the review committee and the recommendation that was made to put it into the charter to create the position. Any of you that want to pursue this matter, this subject matter further, in the handout there's references to other cities in Kansas. I have some attachments from the city of Olathe, I think, and Wichita and Johnson County that show how those communities view the position and the expectations they have of an auditor, city or county. I also mentioned to you already the Association of Local Government Auditors. We had a representative of that organization in the form of the Johnson County Auditor who spoke to our review committee and also spoke to the Policy and Finance Committee. He was a wealth of information and he has made an open-ended offer for assistance if he wants to talk to the members of the governing body. about how to view the creation of the office and what the office can do, the expectations you should have, the job assignments you should be looking at. One of the other points I want to make to you is that In the handout on the city of Wichita's webpage for auditor, they have a scope of services. That's the first page after my notes in the handout. Take a look at that. I think it's a pretty good statement of what the expectations could be as to the role that the city auditor plays within the city government. Thank you for the extension of time, Mayor. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. Next up, Danielle Twimlow.

Well, I like this idea. This is great. I know I hear that there are many things. I did watch that recording from the citizen government commission part of the policy and finance to kind of get an idea of what can happen. And so it sounds like there's lots of options for that. And so I just want to... remind everyone just certain instances of how this can be really, really helpful and things that we've already experienced. We don't talk about return on investment enough. I feel like that's really important that sometimes you have to spend money to save money. and this has a very high return on investment. One situation I want to bring up is, and yes, I'm not done talking about the situation with Kansas Topsoil and what we found with that CORA and going through the contracts and the requirements through those contracts and what was actually happening in reality For instance, in the contracts, it is the responsibility that the contractor alerts when a project is done. Because all the traffic cones and all those things that are put out, the city of Topeka pays for that every day that it's out. So a contractor alerts us so that way we can get them picked up and we're not paying that fee. And it almost never happened with Kansas Topsoil on time. And this is just one contractor. And by looking at that, one project alone had 87 days past due where we were paying for equipment to be on the road and not in turn charging Kansas Topsoil that $50 per day that we could be charging them. So that's $577,250 just on the ones that I pulled from that CORA of fees that were paid because cones and barricades were being left out for weeks and months, whether that, you know, I'm not going to get into the work that was actually done. So we have ways that we can look at how projects are being done, how efficient they're being done, that will save us money in the long run. For instance, we had 849 days that we were paying a contractor who wasn't even a registered business. or held the information, right? Like, so again, could have gotten money out appropriately to contractors that had a better work history. You know, so there are lots of ways that we can look at efficiencies within our departments and it's not, you know, pointing fingers, it's we need a system, right? And sometimes when you've been doing the same system the same way for so long, it's hard to see it done differently. And that is where having that other set of eyes can be really, really helpful. So I'm happy to share with anybody anytime the amount of money we could have saved just on this one contractor had somebody's eyes been on that. But I would really encourage us moving forward at looking at making this that independent office auditing. Thank you.

Thank you. So I don't want to speak for the whole council, but I'll try to distill what we've talked about. I guess because I think there's two things that would be helpful to us moving this forward from staff. First is what a ballot question would look like so that whenever that next election comes up, we have that ready and can be ready to move that forward. The second piece is it would be helpful if you legal could provide us a comparison of what it would look like if we hired that individual just in-house now as an employee starting immediately and would be reporting again under our normal processes, or what a contract until we get a charter change would look like, just so we all can wrap our heads around any legal issues or anything else. I think if we all have those two pieces of information, we can then move this thing and make some decisions as to which approach we want to take as a governing body. Council Member Hiller and then Council Member Adebayo.

Thank you. I just wanted to share a little city council history with everybody on this. We did do that. It was the councilwoman from District 7 who really pushed us doing that, I don't know, 10 years ago now. The decision was made that, given our charter, that that person needed to report to the city manager. People were a little worried about that. It didn't work. We got somebody hired half-time, split them with USD 501, and so he was supposed to go kind of back and forth. The council really never got engaged in being involved in what the charge would be and what investigations or research would be done, and it sort of fizzled. So I bring it up again, gives us a chance to do it a little smarter. I do think that perhaps, and just listening to this, it's fresh for me this time around, but the idea of contracting and having just a certain amount of the budget in the budget each year for us to contract so that the council really can focus on what we want to check in the coming year. It doesn't have to be a forensic audit. It can be, like you were talking about, program efficiencies and economies and excellence and so on. But a way for us to have better control than that happened that first time would be to have it a focused thing so that this body decided each year what department or program or whatever it was going to be. Having that person, somebody mentioned it a little earlier, not on the staff, but instead someone we, spent the time to think about qualifications and experience and selected on contract, but they weren't part of the day-to-day, seems to give it, for me, that arm's length that might make it a little fresher and as a combination of audit, looking inside what we are, but I presume we'd be wanting some suggestions on how to solve a problem or to do it better. So just some first thoughts. I, too, am a little nervous about where the money would come from in a year where we're cutting things. But I think figuring out something sounds like it's worth some time. Thank you.

Council Member Valdeviaco.

Thank you, Mayor. So obviously that's really a downer hearing that. So I would hope that, you know, we would have the wherewithal to, do what we needed to do to move it in the right direction. And I think that there's people on council that have more expertise and definitely some of us in that realm. The other thing, though, Mayor, is I'm wondering, really, who can we go to to provide us as a governing body the different types of auditors so there's a real understanding of that? I don't know if that would be staff. I don't know who it would be.

I think it's a combination. I think staff, I think, as we talked about, there's other cities in Kansas. And so looking at the kind of people they're bringing in to do similar work. And then to Mr. Kalb's point, there is the National Association of Auditors who has some guidelines about who to look for. So I think if we use those collection of resources, we can probably get ourselves in the right direction.

Right. And again, with the intention of helping... all of us understand the different types of auditors there are. If we hire a city auditor, you know, how is that going to be different than doing a forensic audit? How is this different than the annual audit we have? Things like this that can appear so base but yet are really important that we all understand. So thank you.

Any other comments or questions on this item? I think we have some direction to work from and moving in the right direction.

I do have my comments in writing that I'm going to submit for the record, though. Thank you.

I see nothing else. Checking, checking. All right. We will move on to our next item, item C, which is now the legislative agenda. City Clerk.

C is the discussion related to the City of Topeka's legislative agenda for the 2027 legislative session.

City Manager.

Thank you. Mayor and members of the governing body, as I shared our draft 2027 legislative agenda and scheduled with you in early August, the team and I briefed and discussed the draft agenda with the Policy and Finance Committee on August 12, 2026. During the Policy and Finance Committee, I did highlight that one of the additions I want to emphasize with this agenda is a focus on supporting legislation for funding to support the completion of our FEMA floodplain maps and flood mitigation projects. In addition to the draft legislative items, this presentation also includes council feedback for additional items for consideration that we've received to this point. Moving forward after this discussion, we will bring this item back to council for adoption on October 6, 2026. Between tonight and October 6, we would appreciate any feedback or additional items for consideration so we can research and provide the governing body with our analysis before we adopt. Ultimately, we will share our legislative agenda with the Shawnee County delegation in early December, but the vision would be that we begin our conversations with the delegation before December. With that, Kel Beam, our legislative lobbyist, will lead us through this item. Kel.

Thank you. Good evening, Mayor Duncan and members of the governing body. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you this evening and go over the draft 2027 legislative agenda as passed out by the Policy and Finance Committee. It's very similar to the 2026 legislative agenda. I'll briefly touch on the additions that were recommended by the Policy and Finance Committee and then a few other items that were discussed as well for your consideration. Number one and two are very similar. They're both related to funding for transportation infrastructure. One deals more with the preservation of funding in the state highway fund. Traditionally, money deposited in the State Highway Fund always goes to KDOT. However, about 10 years ago, when the state was in a budget crunch, a lot of that money was swept from the Highway Fund and moved to the State General Fund. There has been some discussion, and it seems like there's been some momentum around a possible constitutional amendment being brought this coming legislative session that would enshrine in the Constitution that state highway funding has to go for transportation and infrastructure rather than being swept as it has in previous years. Number two is more specific to the special city-county highway fund. So as you may know, the state collects a motor fuels tax. About one-third of that revenue is directed to the city-county highway fund, which goes to help offset the cost of road and... local infrastructure costs. So there was language added in recent years That fund has actually plateaued and even declined a little bit as vehicles have become more efficient. We've kind of seen a transition to hybrid and electric vehicles that are using less motor fuels, so there's less revenue going into that fund. So there was language added to the legislative agenda to support alternative funding streams so we can continue to supplement road projects. Number three was the was the item that the city manager mentioned related to seeking state and federal funding to update the flood insurance rate map. I believe the city is still operating under a map that was adopted in 2011. So over 15 years, there have been some changes with erosion and weather patterns that make updating that map necessary. Item number four, this is actually in response to legislation that's been brought forward the last two sessions from the telecom industry. They have brought forward legislation that would require municipalities to pay for the cost of relocating telecommunications infrastructure that's located in the right of way when it needs to be relocated for a public works project. Historically, that has always been paid for by the utilities themselves, but now they've brought forward legislation that would shift those costs on the local governments. So language was added to oppose that legislation. There is also number five is related to the Kansas Housing Resources Corporation's policy of when they're scoring projects to determine who gets awarded LIHTC credits. Currently, they award points for projects that have received municipal building permit fee waivers. There's some concern that those fees go to offset the costs that local governments have. And when those fees are waived, the cost doesn't necessarily go away. So language was added to limit the awarding of points for those fee waivers. And then addition number six, this is actually something that is included in the 2026 legislative agenda and was added back in for this agenda to support state-level efforts to combat human trafficking and child sex abuse. And then there were four other potential additions that were brought up in the Policy and Finance Committee meeting brought forward by Councilmember Hiller. And so I'll go over them, but if I'm wrong or if I misrepresent them, please correct me, Councilmember. Number one related to the zeroing out of structures. I think this was referring to vacant properties that have been appraised at zero and are not having any property taxes collected on those properties. Number two related to changing state statute that requires when vegetation is overgrown and the city writes up those properties. It's my understanding that state law requires the city to then abate that vegetation and doesn't allow the city to charge the full cost of that. And then number three was a proposal to require landlords to notify tenants of ongoing open code violations before they sign a lease. And then the fourth potential addition relates to changing state law that prohibits municipalities from regulating the public right of way or prohibiting political signage in the public right of way within 45 days before an election. And then this is the timeline that the city manager mentioned for getting the draft agenda approved and presented to the Shawnee County delegation in December. With that, I'm happy to stand for any questions.

Council Member Cale.

I'm glad to see number six back, the combat human trafficking, where it also talks about child sex abuse. And the sad thing is, since we brought this up last year, it seems like we can't go a week without seeing in the news a teacher or a clergy member being caught in some type of situation. I know a lot of states over the last year or two have gotten into grooming laws to help strengthen some of the cases that they have. They've looked at... punishing mandated reporters that cover up. So if the principal, superintendent, whoever, another teacher is part of the cover-up, if there's any, that they are punished just as much, lose their license, get criminal charges. And also some states have come up with policies and training for teachers and students on to help prevent these situations from happening. Uh, because like I said, it's, it seems like I know with the world of social media and the way news cycles work, uh, over the last few years, everything's out there a lot more than it was 20, 30 years ago. But this seems like it's, it's a exploding epidemic right now. So, uh, definitely would like to see some of those things that we go for, especially like a grooming law and, and, um, situations of cover-up because those those necessarily don't happen in the bigger cities but the smaller towns it's one of those things that when something like that happens they try to get it swept over the wrong rug as quickly as possible and things don't get to where they need to go so this way it would if especially with many reporting if we could get that something like that in there that way definitely maybe push them more to to pursue something like that and rather sweep it under the rug thank you councilmember Miller

Thank you, Mayor. Following up what you just said there, I don't know if you meant to hold out on other possible offenders being public officials or elected officials and their financial supporters, but we won't go down that route right now. Legal, if we go back to that... the one you had with the possible amendments and possible additions, there was a memo sent out talking about the zero and out of value of structures. Could you guys give us an update on that, of what that was as it pertains to what the county does right now? And what laws are you in place for that?

I believe I can speak knowledgeably to that issue.

Thank you.

We did, we meaning Leah Bowling, Economic Development Director, and myself did some research, and we also spent quite a bit of time talking to Steve Ballman. So I want you guys to understand that the starting point is the Kansas Constitution that basically says the legislature shall provide the framework for valuing property. And then when you go to KSA 79201, don't quote me on that, right around there, it basically says that all properties shall be valued based upon the fair market value. And so that's the statutory framework. Now, there are some ethical guidelines that have been espoused that the appraisers have to follow. But basically, in our conversation with the appraiser, it is when he is looking at a parcel, he takes into consideration a number of factors in terms of whether or not how he should value that structure. And so the concern was that we have structures that are existing on properties that have a value of zero. And in those cases, the appraiser was able to provide us with methodology or the reasoning behind that. You could have environmental contamination that the cost to cure would be far more than the value of the structure. You could have a structure that was so dilapidated that, again, the cost to renovate that would be less than. And so that framework already exists legally in terms of what needs to be there. And then that appraiser is an elected official and does his best job in terms of following the statute to come up with a fair market value for that parcel. If he makes a mistake, he is the first one to admit it. Right? But for the most part, and we gave him a long spreadsheet that had a number of parcels on it, many of which didn't even have a structure on there. And there was a memo as well as the spreadsheet that was attached as part of these materials. So my honest opinion, I think that he is doing his job. He is doing his job well. And he does this on a case-by-case basis. I do not see the need for us to ask for... legislation to interfere with the process that's already there, that's already grounded in the Constitution and state law.

I agree with that. Thank you. Council Member Bradbury.

Thank you. It seems like during our committee meeting we had some discussion about home rule. Do you remember?

Yes, thank you for the question. I believe that was brought up, and I believe that's something that's already in the legislative agenda is supporting the home rule for Kansas municipalities.

If I may, it's lines 10 through 14 of the legislative agenda resolution that to the greatest extent possible to support the home rule authority of municipalities.

OK. OK. Thank you. I was under the impression that there could probably be some attacks on that during the session.

Yeah. It seems like, and I'm sure the mayor can back me up on this, it seems like that's something that every year there's three or four new bills out there, new ideas that chip away at- Three or four is a modest number. that chip away at home rule the latest you know relates to the ability of you know this is the one that comes to the top of mind local governments to set their own building codes I've also seen things related to certain tenant protections that local governments cannot do. So every year, I would say that that's something that's under threat.

Council Member McGee.

Thank you, Mayor. As you had pointed out at a previous meeting, I think we need to keep an eye on the push to eliminate franchise fees. I think that should be on our list as well.

Is it in there somewhere? I just don't remember.

Yeah, I don't have it in front of me. I apologize. I just don't remember which line that is. Yes, I'm pretty sure it's in there. I just don't remember which lines. Yes, there will be a bill to eliminate franchise fees. There will be legislation to... restrict our abilities to control our own right-of-ways, all of that is under attack by various entities.

I've got the right-of-way in here, but I don't think it's franchise fees. No franchise fees. Okay.

Well, let's make that note and add franchise fees to that. So that can be one, protect our right for franchise fees and right-of-way. Because that one's big. I think we collect about $15, $16 million a year in franchise fees. So, yeah. Council Member Valdivia Alcala.

Thank you. Thank you, Mayor. I have a number of questions, and it's really odd because I think two years in a row I was on policy and finance, and I think that I was on there with the mayor. And so when we worked with the legislative agenda, I never thought to ask these questions. But I'm asking them now. So we get this legislative, we approve this legislative agenda, and you're our relatively new lobbyist. um what do you do with this once you start once a new session starts up do you prioritize based on what has been told you know to you by hopefully people in the governing body or the administration some of our most vital needs at this point. Let me just use an example with homelessness. You know, I had done a number of testifying, you know, over a couple of years about homelessness and how the money was needed and, you know, the vibe from the legislature was basically to try to criminalize it, and municipalities didn't need any money because you just needed to lock up all the homeless. And, you know, things like Built for Zero were, you know, pie in the sky to many, you know, many legislators on these particular committees. So we know that this is a need. So let's look at something, too, like I just had at our flood map. So in Councilman Kell's district, which, you know, both of us had gotten immersed in it, we are looking at serious issues of flooding along Butcher Creek that is impacting a whole swath of individuals in their homes. And so there's money that is needed to come up with a plan. There's, you know, all of these things that are being very condensed down into flood maps. So when you go and start a new session, do you treat these all with equal weight or do you have any understanding, not at all, of what might be something to keep an extra sharp eye out on? I'm trying to understand because I don't know what lobbyists do, a very base level of what lobbyists do. But some of these issues, I think all of them are important, but some of these rise to the level of emergent. So what say you?

Sure. Thank you for the question. Yeah, so I work with the city manager's office to prioritize issues on the legislative agenda. I say a lot of these are defensive issues, issues that when they come up, we will oppose them. On some of the more proactive issues, I think for example, the flood map, something that we are going to be supporting and actively pursuing. As soon as the legislative agenda is adopted by the council, I will be meeting with our delegation, legislative leaders, important legislators on key committees to start greasing the wheels prior to the legislative session because I think one of the benefits of adopting this early in October is we have time to have those meetings in advance of the legislative session before things are really moving and they're just getting inundated with ideas and bills.

And so let me ask you then, thank you for that, let me ask you another question. When we did the push to try to get the inspections done of rental multifamily dwellings and tried to get the inspections done, of course, with permission. And there was other things added to it. It looked like it was hopeful at first, and then it just went through this slow yet very intentional death. So with some of these more intense and emergent legislative agenda pieces, do you see any benefit at all in partnering? That may be a taboo word in the world of lobbyists, but you know, with partnering with lobbyists that are working with other municipalities, so that when testimony occurs or whenever whatever other magic that you do behind the scenes with partnerships can actually develop to make a stronger case. I've talked to this guy for years about partnerships and I'm sure that in some level it happens and I'm just not aware of it but I want to know what your take is on that too.

Yeah, absolutely. I think partnerships are huge. Coalition building in the legislature is huge when you can come with different organizations, different municipalities, or even sometimes different interest groups all on the same page, all making the case for a piece of legislation that goes a long ways. One of the ways we do that, just from a municipality standpoint, every Thursday during the legislative session, myself and all the other municipal lobbyists meet for lunch at the League of Municipalities office to talk through what the big issues are that happened that week, what looks like what's coming up next week, and we kind of divide and conquer from that standpoint. So to answer your question, yes, partnerships are huge in the legislature.

And you do that.

Council Member, can I add something really quick? So a couple things. One, the idea of us trying to adopt this early actually came from State Senator Schmidt at the Butcher Creek meeting, right? So the intent is specific to your question on emergency issues. That's one that, again, I highlighted it to Policy and Finance Committee because I do see a sense of urgency to address all of our issues. But that one, I definitely want to start initiating engagement with our delegation early on that. That was at the senator's recommendation. So that's one. To your question about collaborating with other cities, we just met with the city of Lawrence today to talk about their legislative agenda. We share with them that as soon as council adopts ours, that we'll send it to them so that we can continue to build those coalitions. Last year, I think we met with I think five different cities and counties to talk about legislative agendas. So yes.

So to whoever or to both, thank you for that. And this would be my request is that once you two start meeting, I think because let's look at the flood issue again. It impacts Cal. I got involved in it. It is impacting all of these folks in the southeast Humboldt area. And so as you two develop that tier, which it should be a tier, it would be appreciated if you could share that with us. Additionally, go ahead. Were you going to say something?

It would be helpful if the council actually provided us guidance on that, actually, as we're having a discussion.

I'm down with that. I'm down with that. Thank you. But the other part of that, too, is that when these coalitions are actually happening, And if it is adding or detracting from the strength of the push I think that the Policy and Finance Committee obviously has worked hard on this. The ideas are coming from other council people on what to put on this agenda. We need that tight updating, maybe not so much in the weekly report or something like that or an email, but I think it would behoove us to have it here as well. So if there needs to be any additional discussion or input, we can do it and so the public can hear. what we're doing. I personally think when it comes to this, the way that we're talking about property tax evaluation and how last week you talked what was needed with the legislator for this reciprocal relationship, a lot of citizens do not understand how much sits in the hands of the legislature. Even if it could get down to some kind of bullet point, this is how they get involved. This is what ties our hands. I mean, we're all involved in it. I'm not saying it's just one or the other. But to put something out there so that the people can see, and it's not like they're actually part of the dialogue, but they can see into what really happens at the Statehouse and how our hands are tied. but something easy for them to understand. So those would be my requests because those updates to us at this level, especially coming into this new session, are going to be really important. Thank you.

Council Member Hiller.

Thank you. I'll first shout out to everybody who was involved in getting this started early. I felt like we needed to do that for a long time. And I think somewhere in our policy it says August or October, not January. So this is really great. And I did speak with policy and finance. For some reason, I didn't make the minutes, so I can make up whatever I said, right? I would note that I really appreciated the additions that were discussed, but somehow between the June version of this and the August 14th version, the section that was new on city-county highway funds disappeared. So I would encourage you to put it back in.

That was added, and you may have printed off an earlier draft, but we caught that error earlier this week when I was going through and saying it's not here. Legal added that back in. Megan switched it out on the agenda, so the item in front of you does have that.

great well the one i printed off at that time doesn't so good good for you on the housing one and i've mentioned this before i realize it's a little sensitive but we've been working on a variety of things on housing affordable housing and so on and we've also as as my colleague mentioned have kind of run this issue of mandatory inspections a couple of times and the legislature's made it pretty clear that's not going to go anywhere and I would like to see a substitute just for that. I think that this section is well written. It talks first about landlords and inspections on rental property. Then it talks about strengthening protections in contracts for deed. And third, it talks about giving cities additional tools to deal with vacant and abandoned housing. I think that's really well done. I'd like to suggest an amendment to substitute a little bit more broad language on the rental housing one. And so instead of the very narrow require mandatory inspections for landlords accepting public funds, instead to say we support legislation allowing cities to assist renters in asserting their rights for safe, affordable housing. I think that gives us a lot of latitude to run a variety of things forward. So when the time is right, I would like to suggest that. On the four things that... You just went through about what I brought up at the session. I do think we need to continue looking at the zeroing out of the value of structures, but it's premature at this point to put it specifically on the agenda. Apparently, part of the key to that is that if the appraisers think it would cost more money – to rehab a building, then its appraised value will be when people get done. That's one of the key things they use to zero it out. Frankly, for most people that are fixing up a seriously deteriorated building or even have bought one and then want to do major improvements, they're upside down in that cost. So that might have been a reasonable measure years ago, but if we're going to save housing at all, it's probably going to be expensive. So I just think working on that a little bit, we have over 2,000 vacant structures in the city of Topeka. Murray, I have not talked with you, but I knew you were talking about pilots at some point. And when we're having to spend our money and time protecting the security of these structures because they are more vulnerable than ones that are occupied and then we're not getting any taxes at all from someone who's chosen for whatever reason to keep it vacant because they don't change that valuation until they've been vacant for a while. But... I think that our vacant structures mapping identified that we have over 400 properties that are literally a structure that's been vacant for a while. I'd still like us to study it, but wait until we're sure we've got something before we move forward. On the vegetation ordinance amendment, Let me correct you just a little bit. The issue is that the state law says if we write anybody up for vegetation, the city shall abate it and then charge the money to the people. It's boop, boop, boop. But particularly since we've added overgrown vegetation in addition to grasses and weeds to our ordinance, if I'm not sure why it says shall absolutely, but if it said may instead of shall, it would allow us some local policy discretion on being able to go ahead and write people up, but not having to go clear their whole lot. So that's why that's in there. The new tenant notification of open code violations, that is something that I wanted to bring forward because it has been brought up in the course of discussions at Public Health and Safety about tenants' protections. I am not sure how many properties actually have active code violations on them at the time the tenant moves in. But what I put in here based on experience on that is that we certainly, we've got a legal opinion that we could do our own local ordinance on it. But I frankly think if we want to do it, it's much better paired in the Kansas Residential Landlord Tenant Act as part of the requirements to do move-in inventories because people will see it that way. So just something to think about. And then the override, when you were talking about the state's rights and so on, and in public rights of way. I brought up the fact that the state overrides our local option, our home rule, by allowing campaign signs to be in the public right of way. What we have seen since that was enacted is that, and we saw it particularly this last time around just for example, is that once the campaign signs go out, People think it's legal to put anything out there, and we've got the whole town full of signs. And then after the election's over, all those other signs are still there, and people are continuing to put them out. And so I think Spencer thought that there was no way the state legislature would change that fact. But if that's true, we probably ought to plan for some serious pre- and post-election education of our public on what that sign is. ordinance or the sign law really is. So just wanted to throw those comments out. Thank you.

All right. Any other questions or comments on this issue? Does not appear to be. So with that, thank you, Cale. Thank you. It gives us some direction. And with that, we are going to take a 10-minute recess, and we will be back here in 10 minutes at 840. I guess it's 10 and a half minutes. All right, welcome back. We are back from our recess. We will now move on to non-action item discussion item D, our operating budget. City Clerk.

D is the discussion related to the City of Topeka 2027 operating budget.

City Manager.

Thank you. Mayor, members of the governing body, as we shared last week, we have completed our departmental budget overviews. And during the five-year financial forecast, we identified a few potential budget amendments that we would be for consideration this evening. Although we do not adopt the budget until September 15th, any feedback we can get from council on amendments that you may be considering before then would be helpful for us to research before we adopt the budget. With that, I'll turn this over to Josh McInerney, Deputy Director of Budget and Finance, to lead us through this item.

Thank you, City Manager, meeting governing body. So we just want to go through a couple of changes in the budget. Now, these are just administrative items and I'll go through them very briefly. So the first one is, we've talked about this before, but we're going to establish a planning development services fund now. In the first iteration of the budget, we only moved the development services portion into its own separate fund. So originally, it was just out of the general fund. All of it was embedded within the general fund, the revenue and expenses. But we did not move out the planning expenses that cover the current planning and the planning review fees that are in revenue. one of the proposals that way the whole department is out of the general fund is moving those expenses out of the general fund along with the revenues into that planning development service fund and so what that would do is it would raise the authority of that new fund by about 1.8 million dollars and then also place the revenue in the fund now the general fund wouldn't change because Since that fund already operates at a deficit, we would still have to transfer money out of the general fund to support it. So we're only doing this just to track better how are we operating with how much revenue comes in for development service operations versus the expenses that incur in it. So the plan was to, over the course of the next couple of years, One of the governing body's policy considerations is to talk about adjusting fees to where if that fund could ever be self-sustaining, but that's a future conversation. So that's just one administrative item that we had to discuss.

The point goes that I just want to reiterate too that we do have a five-year proposed fee schedule on our development and planning fees to actually make that a self-sustaining fund over five years. So I just want to reiterate, it'll be a self-sustaining fund after five years. Thanks, Josh.

And so some of the other changes. And so if we go through with not doing the SRO contract with 501, currently we get about $300,000 from 501. So if we don't do that, we don't get that revenue or whatever the negotiated terms are. If we don't get that $300,000 revenue comes down. So that means we don't have a balanced budget within the general fund. So we'd have to reduce expenses accordingly. So We reduce revenue by 300,000 and then a way to make that back up is. We cut all non essential travel and education by 100,000 dollars within the general fund and then. Some miscellaneous corrections just with through various line items or those 1st, 2, but then currently we transfer. Quite a bit of money from our general fund to our insurance fund now. We have built that fund back up over the last couple of years because at the end of 2025, it was only $100,000 for a city our size. That's a woefully low amount to where at the end of this year, we're going to be around $700,000. So the policy consideration would be ending this year about $600,000. And then we're going to build that back up at 27 again to be just under a million dollars if everything comes in as expected. But even a million dollars is still Low for a city our size, but that's that's what we'd have to do to submit a balanced budget in the general fund. And then finally. There's been some presentations about the internal payment management program. So, if we do that work in house, we would have to rely less on contractors, which would reduce authority for expenses. So. A lot of that's just generous general cleanup and depending on the which way the governing body goes with the. The 1st bullet, but. just anytime we lower revenue that we're getting, we have to have an offsetting expense reduction because we have lower revenue. So and then the final thing, just as a reminder, um, we have a budget hearing next week and then the default. So the subsequent week we have to approve the budget. Then it would go for before the county and the state, just the general submission documents.

So with that, we can answer any questions, questions or comments for staff or Josh Councilmember Hiller.

I was trying to follow along and I failed. I guess you totally lost me on that million dollars.

Okay. So yeah, and I can, I can luckily, I want to say we're not approving this tonight, but I'll send a graphical representation for visual purposes. Yeah. So right now this expense lies within the general fund. Okay. So $1.7 million, we have $133 million budget. So we'd remove that 1.7 out of the general fund. But that 1.7 is still happening in real life, and it would happen within the development services fund. Now, since the development services fund would now have a negative expense balance to where we'd be running a negative cash balance, that has to have a subsidy from somewhere. So then we transfer money out of the general fund into that fund to make it net neutral. So a lot of moving money.

Okay.

So I'll send out a flow chart, a better representation.

That would probably be easier to track.

Yeah, no, I get it.

But I do see the important takeaway is that it's the one-time expense we've got to transfer around so that five years from now, that's a self-sustaining fund that's not drawing down from the general fund. There's the initial investment we've got to make in that so it can sustain itself.

Because the one thing we can't do is we can't move expenses out of the general fund without a corresponding revenue source and then just have a negative cash balance sitting in the fund for five years and then the auditors come back and say, you have a negative $2 million fund balance. That's what we don't want to have happen.

Well, and I'm glad you caught it. I mean, we're trying to get ahead on not just moving stuff around. Thank you.

Any other questions or comments on Josh on these changes?

Or if any of you have any suggested or, you know.

You've got two weeks left if you've got changes, amendments, things you love, things you hate, all that fun conversation.

All right.

If there's nothing else then, last chance. And we will move on. That brings us next to public comment. We have several people signed up this evening. First up, we have, if I can find my list, it was right in front.

Oh, Ms. Sandra Lassiter.

Good evening, everybody. Real quickly, I want to commend you, Mayor, And that is on the article that was written just recently about the investigation in the city. And as I began to peruse the article, I was impressed with the fact that, of course, you said we're concerned with the investigation and our citizens. I don't just represent myself. I represent concerned citizens. But I really would like to see us also. And I'm sure that the group that you've contracted with are very credible and they're outside. organization, attorneys, which I understand. That's a wise decision, of course. Now, we're also concerned about the financial expense to secure them, and that's because we're concerned citizens. My other concern is with the Lexapo, and I think we voted for that about maybe October or started in January. And the Lexapo did a program, invited some of our community people to participate in that. And we've not heard anything back about Lexapo. And I believe it was about a $150,000 project. Now, Chief Vallejo has no problem in meeting with us, and we appreciate the fact that he recognizes us, respects us. We can meet with him in silo, but we would prefer to have a city council person who is obviously doing the policing committee or the policy committee to present back to the public what was the results of them coming, what solutions did they come up with. Is there anything more that we should know about that after paying that amount of money and sitting through the meetings to hear that Lexapro was coming in and assuming they're a quality group. So we'd like to hear more about that. It's interesting to me because I know that we're up here quite a bit, and Ms. Danielle's up here a lot more than myself, but there are people that are really fearful to stand before you, and that's unfortunate. There are people that feel like that, you know, of course you're not listening to them, but I know better. I know that you are. So I tell him, look, we don't have any kings. We have no kings in Kansas, and we have no masters. We have rights, and we need to take our time and express ourselves in a very peaceful and honorable manner. I just was very interested tonight about that city auditor and whether you have someone in mind. I already have somebody in mind. I've watched somebody return again and again about our finances and all of that, and that's Danielle Trimlow. I've been watching her all of this time, but she's been very accurate. And to me, she is a concerned citizen who has heart, who has passion and appreciates the city of Topeka. And I realize after being an administrator and being in leadership, as many of you are, that people tend to choose people that are it's maybe nepotism. or maybe just celebrating some friends and all of that. But we're at the point in time and age where we really need to select persons who are qualified, who are concerned, who are interested in our city. And I would like to highly recommend Daniel Trimlow for that city auditor position. So thank you for your time. Be blessed tonight.

Good evening, Your Honor. I want to talk about data centers. And you know, I would hate to see data centers be like Maverick. I don't know enough about them. I don't have a dog in the hunt. But I do, it's a real estate deal. So let's just look at it as a pure real estate deal. I know a little bit about that. And what amazes me about the deal itself is this deal should be out in the commerce park right next to, if it's going to, I think it's coming because the state, you know, it happened at the state level. And so I think it's coming no matter what. There's too much pressure. But let's just look at it as a real estate deal alone. The Commerce Park, you've got between, you know, right on 49th Street, 288 acres. And between the city, go Topeka, and you've got a substation right in the middle of that 280 acres. Uh, then if you if you added some of the ancillary real estate right around it, you can get up to 352 acres right there. And I think there's some solutions you could probably have with data centers. I mean, they're already here in Topeka. And now it's just the scale. But the thing is, you take real estate that's been off the tax rolls for decades. 20, 22, 23, 24 years. Then all of a sudden you've got real estate that's in the title. A lot of that real estate is titled to Go Topeka, the growth organization of Topeka, which you shouldn't have. The city and county ought to split up the real estate or figure out a way to do it. But a non-government organization shouldn't take title to real estate that was bought with taxpayer money. It already creates an unfair advantage. What we saw, interestingly enough, with Maverick is that it was done right out here, right in the public. You know, I'm very disappointed that my... District 1 person didn't vote for it. There's no reason that District 1 shouldn't have benefited from the Maverick deal. But here, let's think about it. Ring, ring. Hey, yeah, this is the mayor. Oh, you want to come to Topeka? You got to talk to Go Topeka. Well, then Go Topeka talks to itself, and the deal gets killed before we ever know it. All right. Water. I was actually coming down to talk about the water today. Why don't we just treat everybody equal? Everybody. Just everybody pays the same rate, no matter what. I don't care if you create it. There's not two heavens. So the stockholders of PepsiCo, their profit last year was $10 billion. So just everybody pay the exact same rate. The corporations, they ought to be helping the little guy, the citizens. I mean, we have to smell Frito-Lay. So why should they get better water rates than me? So if we just treated everybody in this community the same, there'd be less to govern. Thank you.

With that, we'll move on to announcements. City Clerk.

Okay, just to provide a quick overview of the September 8th governing body agenda. Next Tuesday, we will have one board appointment. We will have two presentations, a communications overview, as well as the Topeka housing study update. We will have the minutes of the regular meeting on the consent agenda, and then we will have the public hearing for the 2027 operating budget. For non-action items, we will have the discussion for the utility lien ordinance, as well as the fire station relocation plan. And that is all that I have. Thank you.

City Manager.

Nothing tonight, sir.

Thank you. Council Member Valdiviacola.

Nothing. Thank you.

Council Member Ortiz.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. There's a lot of August birthdays, but I wanted to shout out Raul Gomez, who's 96 years old today. And he's been a Spanish interpreter for both the judicial branch, and also the courthouse. So happy birthday to you, Ms. Fisher, who's my neighbor. And yesterday she was 97, and a schoolmate, Frank Stiff. I tell you, I ask these 90-year-olds, what do you do to get that old? And they say they have a drink. So I went over and had a drink with Ms. Fisher today, and I'm going to continue to have a drink. Thank you, Ms. Fisher.

Sounds like knowing you helps us live a little longer, so that's good. That's good. Council Member Banks.

Nothing tonight, Mayor. Thank you. Council Member Kell. As that one cartoon had it, it's hot in Topeka. Make sure you're checking on your neighbors, checking on the animals that are outside. We're going to get a little reprieve here and there, but for this week, it's going to be 95 to 100 degrees, and it's just nasty out there right now in September. So please look out for each other. Council Member Miller.

Thank you, Mayor. In two days, I will have a preteen boy in my house, and I am extremely scared about it because it seems like every single day he starts to talk more-ish than he did the day before. And with the birthday that you had a little while ago, you obviously are in it as well, Mayor Duncan. But I hope that he has a good birthday, Marcus Jr., on September 3rd. Thank you.

I'm proud to say I can mark myself safe from the middle school overnight that we had in our house. So that was good. Wait till you get those. Godspeed. Council Member Bradbury. Council Member McGee. Deputy Mayor Hofer.

I only have one thing to say. It's 72 degrees where I am.

Councilmember Heller.

Thank you. I actually made a short list this time. I guess we've seen so much stress and strain and so many plans underway but not yet there. And I kind of stepped back and made a short list of what's going on. And really, there's a lot going on in Topeka. Sometimes it's a little mind-boggling to see all the change. But for instance, the Beacon had a grand opening for opening their rooftop entertainment venue today at 4, right before the council meeting. I was not there. But how exciting is that? I'm disappointed to see Capital Federal. Yesterday was their last day at 12th and Topeka. shutting it down completely, yet time goes on. Right next door, however, in trust, even though some of the historic preservationists were not happy about them tearing down the bank that they had, is now about three-quarters of the way along building a brand new building there, also at Huntoon and Topeka. And it's looking great. I don't know about all of you, but I've been getting about two ribbon cuttings a week in terms of inviting if I'm available to go. And that's exciting that that much is happening with typically our small businesses. It's been unhappy news, especially in District 1, with news of fires and then just personal tragedies if we can lump things together. On the other hand, I am very encouraged – Some people make some disparaging comments about our older neighborhoods and so on, but when I go around in Central as well as other parts of town, I'm just very encouraged by the sounds of hammers and saws and clear action to take good care of and rebuild our neighborhoods going on. By private individuals, just getting her done. That's all. Just wanted to share it with you.

A couple of things. I just want to reiterate what everyone said about the heat. Also, if you've got kids or know kids who are in sports, make sure they're drinking and being careful out there on practice fields. I know a lot of schools are making adjustments, so I appreciate that. September 12th is Brew at the Zoo. I don't normally promote it, but for those who are interested, I've agreed to be in the dunk tank at some point. The good news is I'm like a couple hours in, so I will tell everyone to please drink responsibly, but drink just enough that maybe your aim's a little off when it gets my turn in the dunk tank. That would be all right. And the last thing is it is Washburn's first home football game of the year this Saturday. They actually are 1-0 already, so that's a great start for them this season. So get out there and support the local Ichabods. With that, we have a need for two executive sessions this evening, so I will turn it over to the city attorney.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The motion would be to recess into executive session not to exceed 15 minutes to discuss confidential data relating to the financial affairs or trade secrets of certain corporations that have interacted with the city regarding an open RFP. As allowed under KSA 75-4319-4, the open meeting will resume in this room in the governing body chambers. The following staff will be necessary to assist the governing body in its deliberations. The city manager, deputy city manager, and any other staff members as needed.

All right, I'll move to approve that motion. Do I have a second? Second from Councilmember Kell. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed, say nay.

Nay.

We've got two nays, Miller and Ortiz. With that, we will go immediately into executive session. So if you're not supposed to be here. All right, we have come out of our first executive session with no action being taken by this governing body. We have a need for a second executive session this evening. City Attorney.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. The motion would be to recess into executive session for a time not to exceed 45 minutes to discuss personnel matters involving individual employees and specific employee positions as allowed under KSA 75-4319B1. The open meeting will resume in this room, the City Council Chambers. The following individuals will be necessary to aid the governing body in this discussion. The City Manager, the Deputy Director of Budget and Finance, and any other staff members as needed.

All right, first I'm going to make a motion to exceed 10 o'clock. Do I have a second?

Reluctantly.

Pardon? Second from Councilmember Hiller. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed, say nay.

Nay.

Miller and Ortiz are nos. Now I will move to go into executive session. Do I have a second? Second from Councilmember Kell. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. All those opposed, say nay.

Nay.

Councilmember Miller and Ortiz are noes. With that, we will go immediately into executive session. All right. We have come out of executive session. There is no action to be taken by this governing body. And this meeting is adjourned at 9.59.